sharing garden club ideas or topics

23 years ago

Started a garden club locally and would like to hear from other garden club members, maybe share your topics, programs or hints (good or bad experiences) crafts or how tos, any ideas for fund raisers, gladly read any helpful hints.

Featured Answer

Jodi Morgan

4 years ago

Garden Club Topics

1)How to put together nice hanging baskets
2) Start saving blooms in spring in a large container (whole club activity) for potpourri to share in Oct. and Nov.
3) Basic flower designs
4) Table size water fountains – how to make
5) Hosta gardening – miniature – medium – gigantic!
6) Holiday wreath making – bring scissors, materials, etc.
7) Unusual and underused garden plants
8) Honeybees – garden friends – contact local Bee society
9) Bird migration
10) Putting your garden flowers to rest
11) Mysteries of the soil - - all you need to know about soil and the effects different varieties have on plants – extension officer
12) Container gardening – winter displays
13) Lasagna gardening – no-til, no-dig gardening
14) Attracting hummingbirds
15) Making it easy – things you can do to make gardening easier, mulching, potting, and much more
16) ‘not all insects are bad’
17) Dried flower art on soap
18) What’s new in recycling?
19) History of Sunflowers
20) Companion planting
21) Moon planting – by the light of a silvery moon
22) Lilies & hostas
23) Hyper-tufa planters
24) Leaf casting
25) Planting Container party
26) Fall arrangements with pumpkins and gourds
27) Feeding your winter friends – best types of food for no waste, food recipes
28) Who knew, plants at the Zoo. .
29) Old Native Indian gardening
30) A journey through time and nature
31) Hydrangea mania - Everything you ever wanted to know about hydrangeas
32) nightscaping – garden rooms – lighting – playing cards – entertaining
33) Shrubs beyond yew
34) Victorian parlor plants
35) Heirloom plants and seeds
36) Wildflower walks
37) Seed starting – different styles – hydroponics – under lights – under plastic etc.
38) Lawn treatments – when and how – from feeding to mowing height at different times of the year to dethatching to plugging
39) Creating a wildlife vacation land – wildlife federation
40) How to garden when you are handicapped – tools and techniques
41) Rain gardening and creating a rain barrel
42) Aquatic gardening
43) Carnivorous gardening – contact carnivorous plant society
44) Bonsai – expanding the plant lover’s horizon – contact local bonsai society
45) Topiary gardening – contact topiary society
46) Easiest way to start a new garden – newspapers
47) Square foot gardening
48) Dwarf orchards – how many trees do you want?
49) Terrestrial Invasives – problematics and management – extension office
50) Wholesale! – set up with company beforehand – whole club go at same time and buy plants at wholesale or near wholesale prices
51) Thorns and jelly – cacti and other succulents
52) Ornamental & garden pest management
53) Great gardens of the world – their history, design, traditional plantings, for example – India, Thailand, Japan, China, Austria, Netherlands
54) Heirloom vegetables
55) The tomato – old and new
56) From garden to vase – cutting gardens – harvesting & condition – perennials, shrubs, annuals, foliage
57) Rock gardens – what, where, how – rock garden society
58) National Agricultural Library – what’s there?
59) Intimacy in your garden!! Intimate spaces, texture, color, & the right plant for the right space
60) Roadside Geology of Georgia - Bill Witherspoon - rocks deposit nutrients into the soil, plants grow based on nutrients found in the soil

61) Nutrient management – managing applications for strong growth, while minimizing escaping run-offs. Extension agent

62) Cooking with Herbs from your garden
63) Impact gardening – small space gardening
64) Host a chili cook-off and craft fair
65) What’s buzzing in your garden? Different bees, their benefits, & why they love your garden – promoting pollinators. Extension agent or bee society
66) Doing battle with gypsy moths – extension agent
67) Wings of fancy – butterfly types & their host plants
68) That darn squirrel ate all my tulip bulbs again! Using plastic cups, yogurt tubs etc.
69) Viburnums and their use in your landscape
70) Woody ornamentals – extension agent
71) Conifer gardens – green – green – and more green
72) Out of the heat and into the cool – shade gardening
73) Moss gardening
74) Zinnia or sunflower contest or flower show
75) Your heady garden – fragrance
76) Garden structures – accessorizing your garden
77) The Natural Communities of Georgia - Leslie Edwards
78) Wow! No weeds! – miniature gardens
79) Annuals for color

80) Rose Gardening

81) Organic Gardening Fundamentals

82) Home Garden fruits and berries

83) Trees & Shrubs for Home Landscapes

84) Easy Care Lawns and Groundcovers
85) Perennials for all year

86) Bulbs for Spring, Summer and Fall

87) Going Green (conservation methods) in Lawn and Garden

88) Herb Gardening

89) Wildflower Gardening
90) Container Gardening

91) Greenhouse Gardening
92) Winter Sowing
93) Native Plants in the Home Landscape
94) Piet Oudolf - landscape architect gardening principles

95) Pruning Simplified - What, When, and How
96) Old-Fashioned Flowers for Modern Gardeners
97) Exotic Tropicals for beds and borders

98) Rediscovering Cottage Gardens
99) Planten Un Bloom - public park in Hamburg, Germany

100) Ornamental Grasses for Year-round beauty

101) Art of Preserving Flowers
102) Wreaths for All Seasons

103) How to make a meadow wildflower garden
104) Landscaping Tips and Tricks
105) Garden Therapy

106) Creepy Crawlers in your Garden

107) Planning/planting your lawn/flower beds for Curb Appeal

108) Conservation Planting - improve your soil with the plants you grow
109) Low Maintenance Trees and Shrubs - how native plants make gardening easier
110) Planning for Lifetime Gardening
111) Garden Planning to conserve water - goes beyond just mulching around the plants

112) Hugelkultur Gardening
113) After Gardening - Gardening Stretches - Simple, easy stretches after you garden to avoid muscle cramps and fatigue
114) Xeriscape Gardening
115) Art in the Garden – Garden Sculptures
116) Falconry
117) Daylillies – Merrilily Gardens

118) Mushroom Gardening – grow your own mushrooms
119) Arborists
120) Grasslands
121) Milkweed
122) Clematis
123) “Saving Life on Earth” – Doug Talamy
124) Species vs. Cultivars vs. Natives
125) Honeysuckle – Natives vs. Cultivars

126) Cultivating Care: Building Ecological Communities
127) Wild and Neat: Bridging the Gap between Great Design and Ecology

128) Being Native in the Anthropocene – Chuck Cannon
129) Site Commissioning
130) Composting
131) Hawthornes
132) Monarchs
133) Butterflies
134) Living on a Liberated Landscape
135) Dahlias
136) Rediscovering the Low Country Landscape
137) Endophytes
138) Self-sustaining Landscape
139) Sedges
140) Living in the Wild
141) Growing a Greener World
142) Fluttering through the Garden
143) Bog Gardening
144) Land Trusts
145) Gardening for Joy and Abundance
146) Forest Bathing
147) Botanical Adventures of Charles Darwin
148) Birding
149) Hummingbird Gardening
150) Gardening as Exercise
151) Water Gardening
152) Planting for Overwintering Birds
153) Cut Flower Gardening
154) Rose Gardening

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Comments (17)

dirtcrawler - 5/6
23 years ago
We just started our 5th year as a club. Two friends and I were the originator's (is that even a word:)?). The top 2 crafts we did were stone troughs and stepping stones. These were so enjoyed, we did them 2 years in a row.

Our best fund raising was taking our annual plant share-potted and labeled perennial shares, seedlings, seeds and houseplants- and making it a silent auction with each plant having a minimum 25 cent bid. We also sold crafts at this-garden related that members had made and we invited folks to come to it.We also sold flats and baskets of annuals other years which raised funds but wasn't nearly as enjoyable as the auction.

Some enjoyable programs-we had a lady from an herb society make food while talking about herbs 2x. Once it was all spreads, another time it was a meal.Another time we brought flowers from our gardens and containers. A lady demonstrated some flower arranging and we did one also-everyone shared their flowers.We had an open forum with a horticulturist from a local metro garden-he was a great talker and let us ask anything.I think we've had a lot of different guests-wildflowers, native flowers, ponds, raised beds-how to's, propogating from cuttings, dahlias, easy perennials, landscaping, etc.

A fun thing we did one year that we are doing again this year is a garden tour-of members' gardens and asking some local non-members if they'd share their gardens with us.Afterwards, we'll do munchies and visit.

Good luck with your club and hope this helps!
peter london
23 years ago
I have never taken cuttings from my dahlia tubers. Can any one give me help and advise on the best way please?
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We used to have something like that here, though before I got my own garden plot at the community garden. We'd meet in someone's backyard for a couple hours and take a 5-minute tour of the garden. It was inspired by a group that does occasional organic-garden tours, and that wanted to create networks of organic gardeners. But I found that most people who can afford to own property here don't have time to be outdoors except on weekends, or maybe people who have lots of gardening experience aren't so interested in spending their time in groups. The local group has now become mostly a social hour, with people bringing food and chatting indoors in the evening, lately with someone preparing a presentation on some garden-related topic. It's ok, but I've stopped going regularly unless the topic sounds fascinating because I usually would rather be working in my garden -- the raspberry crop has been astonishing this year, and there's always more compost to sift or distribute. Also, I get to talk to lots of other community gardeners informally. (Ha, so now I've become that experienced gardener who doesn't have time to attend meetings! But I've thought of having garden seminars where experienced gardeners can come to share ideas, and haven't gotten a round tuit. I still think it's a great idea: schedule an hour or two a week when people can drop in.) Maybe you can post a craigslist ad saying something like "organic garden tours: let's meet in our gardens and share ideas." Or find the closest community garden, and wander around and talk to people, or if the gardeners are not there, just observe what different people do in their gardens. Or put up notices at your local independently owned nurseries, local libraries and community centers, etc. The local native-plants group does lectures or slide shows once a month, and has occasionally substituted garden tours. Also, twice a year they do seed and cutting exchanges, where people bring whatever they have too much of and get to take whatever they want. These are very successful, and it'd be a spectacular way to jump-start a local garden group. A garden club in a neighboring town does open-to-all plant and cutting exchanges a couple times a year, which are lots of fun but are usually scheduled for a Saturday morning when too many other things are going on, so I've gone only a few times. They get an ag inspector to vet the donations, so this is something you could do even if you are in an area with quarantines.
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Cute bug! I love the garden fish too. I have a lot of fishy things around my yard.
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Shame ya don't live in Spartanburg. The Spartanburg Men's Garden Club is ALWAYS actively seeking new members (and is about half women). In fact, we just had a vote in June to change the name to something more inclusive, but our constitution requires a 2/3 majority of those in attendance, and we didn't QUITE make it (came close, though -- I was one of those leading the charge). The club's been around 60 years, though, and was all-male until about 15 years ago, and a lot of the old-timers (and many of their wives, who are now members) are just old-school. HOWEVER, our current president is the first female president, and many of the board members are women, and MANY of our most active members in our projects are female. At present, I don't think the club could do all it does without our many active female members. We're a very active club, sponsoring tree-planting projects around the county (and doing prunings and fertilizings for the same), sponsoring scholarships, all kinds of projects. Jeff
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I've belonged to the New Paltz Garden Club for several years now and it is a really wonderful group. We do a lot of civic gardening including the lovely seasonal planters at the Thruway Exit 18 tollbooths, the garden behind the bench at Main & Chestnut, a perennial garden on Huguenot Street & another garden outside Deyo Hall. We work in teams to do all the planting, watering and weeding of those gardens. It's a lot of organizing and work but it really helps brighten New Paltz. We have meetings, lectures, garden tours, swaps (I organize that!) and some more traditional garden club events like a "Table Carousel" which is a kind of table decoration tea party fundraising event. This fall we hosted a judged district standard flower show. Our club has several dozen members with a wide variety of gardening knowledge, skills and styles. We have organic gardeners, master gardeners, rank amateurs such as myself, and some incredibly creative artists in our group. One of our members, Barbara Campbell, has been president of the Federated Garden Clubs of New York State for the past two years. Anyone is welcome to attend our meetings, they are usually listed in the paper's Almanac section and we get great speakers and have interesting programs. We are 99% female (landscaper and all-around good guy Mark Masseo is our sole male member at this point in time - he really helps us when we need some heavy lifting or equipment!) but all are welcome to attend. And did I mention we have killer homebaked desserts at the end of every meeting. : ) If you are interested in learning more about New Paltz Garden Club drop me an email or leave a message at (845) 255-7800. Celeste Cleary
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hcc1937
21 years ago
Hi! I am interested in programs too. I am in charge of programs this year and would love to hear some different ideas.
For one of my programs I hope to get this man who makes his own artificial rocks. I know in my own garden I just can't have too many rocks, and when I do go and find them, some of them weigh a ton. His are light yet heavy enough not to be blown away, and, according to him, easy to make. Helen
come_n_up_roses
21 years ago
hi nancy, Our garden club pres. brought this site to my attention. This is my first year to do programs. We are going to a shop that does alot of things with mosic tile. We are making stepping stones for our gardens, you could decorate bird baths, bird houses exc. its very easy. I have also planned a landscape lighting comp. to come out and give us ideas and how too's on decorative landscape lighting. This winter we are visiting a conservatory in Fort Worth Texas and in the spring we will be taking a tour of acres of Our State flower "The Blue Bonnett" and then we are having lunch with a speaker from a sister garden club who is an expert on Blue Bonnetts. My mind is turning with ideas for the club. Hope this helps. Rosemary with the Ovilla garden club.
FlwrLdy52
21 years ago
Good for you, nancy-mi! Tour your nearest Botanical Garden or historical garden site; definately, stepping stones (and you can make $ selling them and/or teaching non members to make them); local nurseries probably have people who can talk on a variety of subject (some of our best have been "winterizing your garden", "planting for the birds, bees and butterflies", "proper and timely pruning", "herbal crafts"...Let your mind go to whatever you want to learn more about). We volunteer our time to maintain small gardens at the military post, decorate historic sites for Christmas, do a Christmas tree at the shelter for abused women. Look around to see if there is a larger group you could affliate to, if you want that sort of thing (i.e. Garden Clubs of "your state name". Let your plans/programs go with the flow of members' interests/needs/abilities. Above all, have fun and enjoy gardening! (And thanks, come-n-up-roses for a great idea for a program on landscape lighting!)
Nancy5050
21 years ago
Sharing is caring must hurry along places to go things to do
krisp64
19 years ago
Hi Nancy. I belong to several garden clubs. I live in IL so during the summer months we visit gardens and have what we call mini garden walks. Some of these are at members homes and some aren't. During the winter months we have speakers or go to local garden centers for programs. For our fundraiser we sell plants that we have divided from our own gardens on May 1st at a local farmers market. For my other club we use to have a garden walk every other year. We decided for next year not to have a walk because there has become alot of competition in my area for garden walks. So we have been brainstorming for ideas too.LOL
Deborah Pensacola Florida
16 years ago
Hi! I am the new Chairperson for the Ways and Means Committee in our club. I am brand new at this...so any advice or suggestions would be wonderful! For those of you that have sold the stepping stones....how much did you charge? Was it a good money maker?

Thank you,
Deborah
Milton Garden Club
inanda1
16 years ago
Actually I'm posting this for a friend who has moved to Pensacola and wants to find a community garden where she can garden. Up here they are run by the city Parks & Rec. Apparently this isn't the case in the US> Couls anybody point me in the right direction so I can pas it on to my friends.

Many thanks
Ginny in Winnipeg, Canada
rasham india
13 years ago
hello to all the plant lovers and growers. I have recently started a gardening club to motivate like minded people in my city where gardening is still not considered a serious and great hobby. I need all the ideas and suggestions to convince
people to adopt and grow plants for their better and do a good to mother earth.
sally
12 years ago
At our last meeting in May, we went to a local nursery and brought with us a planter or some container we wanted to fill. The owner gave a short talk on the plants that survived in sun, shade, etc. He supplied the soil and fertilizer and helped us to choose plantings that would work for us. We all came home with beautiful planters. He had a great area to eat, so we brought our lunch and had a great time.
Pinkyrose
12 years ago
Anyone wanting to meet and share plants, please contact me; after the East Tennessee Plant Swap, we still have plants to share.
aflacbecky
11 years ago
Our garden club has a fund raiser where we raise money through a combination of silent and live auctions. We do it in November at a country club in our neighborhood. Each member has to bring an item worth $100 (can be less) and we invite friends to come and bid and we bid ourselves; additionally we have about 5 items that are in a live auction and that's where the fun begins. Usually the big items are art or someone's beach house for a long week-end.
We provide lunch for $20 each/wine is an open bar. It is in November and people are in a Christmas shopping mood. Last year we raised $9200 in four hours. It's unbelievable and much more fun that those hard ardous projects we had when we sold live greenery and had to deliver it Thanksgiving week for a profit of $2000! Venues can be much less expensive and auction items cheaper, but results will be the same! And such fun - it has become the social event of the season. We had about 200 last year! Town and Country Garden Club, Durham NC
thejardiner
10 years ago
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This post was edited by thejardiner on Mon, Aug 5, 13 at 11:49
pat_tea
9 years ago
Any good ideas for November meetings?
Nadine Mitchell
6 years ago
Our club had a 'Tool Talk' for our meeting last November. Members brought in their favourite garden tools and talked about why they were their fav's. It was very casual and there were a lot of good tips to be learnt from all our experienced gardeners.

sharing garden club ideas or topics

Jodi Morgan

Comments (17)

dirtcrawler - 5/6

peter london

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