Garden Club

Garden Club 2013

 

At the first meeting of the 2013 Garden Club, we talked about possible topics for the meetings the rest of the year. After some discussion, we came up with the following schedule:

 

Feb - heirloom and pass along plants -  have some plants to share? Bring them along

Mar - Small-scale vegetable gardening

Apr - Cutting gardens and making arrangements

May - Athens tour (East Texas Arboretum, Sandy Perkins' daylily farm, Athens           Organic) - bring a picnic lunch

June - English Gardens - Do it with Texas hardy plants. ( Mary will share her photos from England)

July - Art of Garden Art - buying and displaying garden art

            also share your favorite flower medium - (book, movie, music, art that includes plants or flowers)

Aug - Houseplants (with special emphasis on African Violets and Orchids)

Sept - Shade Gardening and those hard to deal with spots

Oct - Fall Festival

Nov - Garden Design

Dec - Christmas Party

 

If you would like to join our group of gardeners and learn more about any of these topics, you are welcome to come to the first meeting for free to see how you like it. If you then want to join for the remainder of the year, your membership fee will be prorated (at $6.25 per month). This entitles you to a 10% discount on all your purchases for the year.

 



 

 

Garden Club Tour

May 12, 2012

The Garden Club took a tour of local gardens on an overcast Saturday. Although it threatened rain the day turned out to be cloudy and cool - perfect for picture-taking.

We had a great turnout, there were 24 of us in all, in a caravan of cars a block long.

Our first stop was Manon's beautiful home. Sharon has been working with her on her gardens for 6 years now and they look fabulous.

Manon is a great client - she knows what she likes, she knows her gardens (where there is shade or sun during the day, trouble spots) and she know plants.

Despite the heat and drought of last year, and a troublesome armadillo, her gardens look lush and colorful this year.

This walkway was redone just the week before we toured with new flagstone and plantings at the other end. It looked like it had been there forever.

The next garden we visited had been on the Master Gardener tour the previous weekend.

Julia does fabulous displays in all her yard. This birdbath planted with sedum greets visitors next to the front door.

We admired her knack for placing garden art in quirky and charming vignettes.

This is the view of her backyard from the patio. You can see her skillful use of containers and ornaments to fill voids in the beds and draw the eye to outer areas of the garden.

This old stand sits against the wall of the back patio. It is filled with plants, birdhouses and ornaments. What a clever way to fill a blank space.

Our next stop was just down the street in the same area of town, but the garden was very different.

The owner had totally replanted his backyard last year in the middle of the drought. It is a testament to his green thumb that everything survived and is

filling in nicely.

The design of the yard was elegant, with sweeping beds surrounded by gracefully curving crushed granite walkways. The white columns in the back, in front of the fence are second-hand finds evoking the look of the old South. They will be less stark once the tropical-looking foliage planted behind grows to its tall mature height.

Jim also had lovely vignettes in his gardens, though his were more subtle than Julia's.

Our final tour of the day was at Sharon's house. I will let her post my photos of her garden that day on her blog  http://sharonsgardennotes.blogspot.com