HANOVER – Brilliant displays of flowers in well tended public gardens around the Upper Valley wouldn’t be possible without dedicated volunteers who love to beautify their communities for everyone to enjoy.
Mary Ann Holbrook was one of those volunteers, helping to create gardens as a member of the Norwich Women’s Club and Hanover Garden Club.
Holbrook, who died June 26, 2025 at age 88 after a period of declining health, devoted hours to planning, and with others planting and maintaining gardens in Norwich and Hanover. For nearly 20 years, beginning in 2006, Holbrook designed the Norwich Triangle Garden.
“She planned the garden each year with her artistic eye, sense of symmetry and attention to detail,” said Carol Loveland, who met Holbrook when she joined the Norwich Women’s Club. “It was wonderful. She would put it all down on paper.”
Loveland was one of many “worker bees” with Holbrook, nicknamed the “Queen Bee.” “She welcomed us all with kindness and shared her knowledge.”
Holbrook, who became a Master Gardener through the University of Vermont extension program, once traveled to the Chelsea Flower Show in England and returned with a number of ideas on color combinations.
“She just had a great positive attitude and wonderful smile with a slightly mischievous twinkle,” Loveland said. “We had a lot of laughs working together.”
Gardening was a passion for Holbrook.
“It was relaxing for her,” her daughter, Pam, said. “She liked to go into our garden after a day at her nursing job.”
Holbrook’s annual garden planning began long before it was warm enough to plant.
“She would take out colored pencils and graph paper and write the names of the flowers she wanted to plant,” Pam said. “She would visit greenhouses and talk to the people for ideas. She researched all the flowers ahead of time before making any decisions and she knew about sun, shade and colors, so there was always something in bloom. She really had an artistic flair.”
Holbrook’s approach to all she did, from gardening to teaching, nursing and much more was characterized by organizational skills, a desire to learn, a positive attitude and a love for sharing what she knew. Those who spent time on projects with Holbrook say that having fun was always her priority.
She taught mahjong, a game that requires players to collect and discard tiles to form winning hands of sets and pairs, at the Institute of Lifelong Learning at Dartmouth, which later became OSHER. And like most things she took on, Holbrook did more than the basics. Outside the classroom she organized all-day mahjong events or would meet people one-on-one to go over the rules, sometimes inviting players to her home.
“She just wanted people to learn and have fun, because she had fun playing,” said Lisa King, program director at OSHER.
Her high school and nursing school classmate Joan Bialzak stayed close with Holbrook over the years and came from Maryland often to visit.
“Mary Ann taught me to ski and I just followed her down the hill,” Bialzak said “We always had a lot of fun together.”
During her more than 60 years in the Upper Valley, first in Hanover and then Wilder, Holbrook contributed to her community in large undertakings and small acts of kindness, including helping put together emergency preparedness kits for seniors to keep in their homes in case of a disaster.
“If someone was sick and needed a meal, my mother would cook something for them,” Pam said. “She loved to help out in that capacity.”
When Pam and her brother Chris began going to school, their mother often volunteered
“She did cooking classes at the (Bernice) Ray school or would help out wherever she might be needed,” Pam said. “She was super involved in volunteerism. Our whole life was centered around that and she just loved it. It was ingrained in my brother and me from an early age.”
When Chris and his family moved to China for several years, Holbrook visited them and arranged to spend time in the classroom with her grandson.
“Even though she didn’t speak Chinese, she would play with the kids the whole time,” Pam said.
Born and raised in Baltimore by her parents George and Stella (Sepanski) Manz, Holbrook, the first in her family to attend college, graduated from Bon Secours Hospital School of Nursing at Johns Hopkins University. She moved to Miami with a nursing school classmate with plans to become an international travel nurse. While there, she met David Holbrook and four months later they eloped to New York City where they were married in January 1961.
After a brief time in Silver Spring, Md., the Holbrooks moved to Hanover to care for David’s mother. They built a home on Ledge Road and welcomed Pam in 1964. Four years later, Christopher was born.
Though not a fan of the Upper Valley’s cold winters, Mary Ann nevertheless developed a deep love for her adopted hometown and became involved in numerous volunteer efforts over the years, including the American Red Cross and Ford Sayre Ski Club, where her children were members and she served as a director.
In the mid 1970s, Holbrook returned to college and earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing at the University of New Hampshire. She worked part-time for 20 years in the Neurology Department at Dartmouth Hitchcock before retiring in 1995. Teresa Carpenter was a colleague of Holbrook’s and remembers her as dedicated, very professional and pleasant to work with.
“Mary Ann was a nurse’s nurse,” Carpenter said. “She was so well-respected by our group. That is her legacy. She was a very strong advocate for patients and she never backed down. She made sure her patients got the care they needed and wanted.”
Looking to expand her knowledge of nursing and rural medicine, Holbrook traveled to Russia and China with nursing groups. While the Russian trip went fine, in China Holbrook witnessed a historic event on June 4, 1989, that cut short the nursing excursion.
“She was in Tiananmen Square when the uprising happened,” Pam said. “She was looking out her window down at the students gathering in the square.”
The nurses were quickly taken away by bus and eventually made it to Tokyo for a flight home.
After her parents and husband passed away in 2001, Holbrook expanded her community involvement.
Besides teaching mahjong, she was the first curator for OSHER at the Dartmouth Art Gallery. And as chair of the OSHER membership committee she organized OSHER’s 20th anniversary celebration, putting together an evening of skits, music and food.
“Mary Ann was just so full of life, full of energy,” King said. “She was a really good leader, getting people to do things in a masterful way. And she always had a smile on her face. Mary Ann was a hard person to say no to.”
King also remembered an event organized by Holbrook to promote OSHER’s study/travel program. More than just an evening of talks, Holbrook had participants make posters of places they had been, while others decorated. She consulted with the inn’s chef to cook food common in each of the countries.
“She took pride in what she did and always wanted to do a good job,” King said. “That was Mary Ann. She had such a presence about her, she could easily bring people together. If Mary Ann took something on, people wanted to be a part of it because she was a pleasure to work with. She was so energetic.”
Holbrook’s close friend, Sandra Johnson, became a member of the Hanover Garden Club soon after retiring from teaching and loved volunteering alongside Holbrook.
“She stood out immediately as a dedicated and knowledgeable worker and a true lover of gardening,” Johnson said. “She was a master gardener and put her knowledge, love of flowers and organizational skills to good use.”
The HGC has been caring for about a dozen gardens in town since the 1960s and for many years, Holbrook handled the organization of volunteers to plant the gardens over Memorial Day weekend.
“Her favorite garden was planning and planting the Howe Library boxes that lined the walkway, often in a red, white and blue patriotic theme,” Johnson said.
In a 2018 interview in the Norwich Times, Holbrook spoke of gardening as a privilege more than work.
“I feel very fortunate to be working in the garden for 12 years now, with friends who value our efforts to make a beautiful garden for the enjoyment not only for us, but to share with the whole community,” Holbrook said.
As her health slowly declined and limited her activity, King and others said Holbrook’s warm smile and positive outlook never left her.
“I can still hear her laughter and see her smile,” the OSHER program director, King, said. “She was such a positive light. We will all miss her dearly.”
