The Portsmouth Garden Club offers two types of grants to gardeners in the Seacoast area: Pollinator Grants and Community Grants

To support the effort of establishing pollinator-friendly habitats and food sources for bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and other pollinating insects and wildlife, we offer grants for homeowners in the Seacoast area who want to support pollinators by changing their existing gardens or establishing a new garden with native plants and eliminating the use of pesticides.If we begin to manage our own yards organically and with native plantings, we can use them to connect parks and preserves, and other yards creating crucial corridors for wildlife and helping stem the sharp decline in bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. 

Thanks to all our 2025 Grant recipients for working to make our community a better place

• Newmarket homeowner - removing non-native species on the hill in her front yard and replacing them with native perennials and shrubs

• Friends of Bicentennial Park – enhancing the existing plantings of pollinator-friendly plants with additonal native species

• Portsmouth Senior Activity Center – enhancing the existing plantings with new soil, annuals, and perennials

• South Mill Pond Bridge – annual flower box plantings on the Harold Whitney Whitehouse bridge

• Star Island Corporation – a meadow re-wilding project that will reduce invasive species and replace them with native plants that sustain pollinators and migratory songbirds 

• Seacoast Science Center - improving the health of the soil in their flower and pollinator beds and adding new pots and flowers along 1A and at their front door

• Portsmouth High School Student Gardens - renovating the trellis system to grow peas, beans, and cucumbers

• Warner House Volunteers - adding native pollinator perennials to the existing garden

In addition, an endowment fund in memory of former Club President Ruth Nelson, was established in 1988 providing yearly financial support for the Thomas Bailey Aldrich House Gardens at Strawberry Banke. 

Applications for 2026 Grants open on February 1st.