Franklin Garden Club Features Program on Bridge of Flowers - Tuesday, Oct 3 at the Franklin Public Library

The Franklin Garden Club, in conjunction with the Franklin Public Library, will co-sponsor a program on the “Bridge of Flowers,” located in Shelburne Falls, MA, on Tuesday, October 3, at 7:00 PM at the Franklin Library, 118 Main Street, Franklin, MA.  

The program, open to the public free of charge, will be presented by Kirsten Torkelson of KTImages. This presentation features information and photographs on the history of the Bridge of Flowers, future plans, and other sites to visit in the Shelburne Falls area of Massachusetts. 

Torkelson will explain how this beautiful, nationally known walking bridge that features an array of seasonal flower gardens, came to be and how the plantings were developed. The bridge was a former trolley bridge that once carried goods by rail to the Town of Colrain.  In 1929 an initiative to transform the bridge, itself, into a public garden began. The garden was undertaken by the Shelburne Falls Area Women’s Club, now the Blossom Brigade. The bridge is open annually April through October.  

Franklin Garden Club Features Program on Bridge of Flowers (photo by S Sherlock Sep 2022)

 

Recently it was announced that the bridge will be closed for repairs during all of 2024. This is due to age and extreme flooding during tropical Storm Irene in 2011. The project will begin next spring.  The presentation will provide a view of how beautiful the bridge has been in the past and will be in the future.  

Torkelson is a versatile photographer based in Foxboro, MA. She has a passion for nature photography, especially flowers and gardens. Her work has been published in the Foxboro Reporter and her nature photography has won ribbons in New England Camera Club (NECC) competitions and Hopedale's “Day in the Park”.  Her photographs have been shown at the Foxboro branch of the Hockomock YMCA, the VA Employee Art Show, Stony Brook Camera Club exhibit at the Norfolk Library, Hunakai Studio of Fine Arts, a four-month show at the Hawthorne Suites by Wyndham, and currently at Bethany Congregational Church.   

She also volunteers her talents as a candid event photographer to causes like Christmas for Kids, Friends of Camp Saint Augustine, and Bethany Congregational Church.