In November last year, the Garden Club members got very creative with their evergreen centrepieces and wreaths. We all had a good time and left the meeting with tangible evidence of our artistry! It was the first time I had made a centrepiece and by keeping it watered it was still in good shape when I finally dismantled it on January 5 to make room for something else.
The Garden Club is looking forward to a new year of interesting educational programs. We spent part of our January 9 meeting brainstorming program ideas and by the end, had only one fall month for which we purposely hadn’t planned a program. As for our 2013 programs, in February we will have a garden slide show complete with tips on how to take good garden pictures,
March: growing and overwintering summer-blooming tender bulbs (dahlias, tuberose, Nile lily, canna lily, calla lily and more)
April: growing and using edible flowers and herbs
May: gardening with deer in the Kimberley area
June, July, August and September: tours of members’ gardens
October: Ikebana (the art of Japanese flower arranging)
November: to be determined
December: our very popular Christmas pot luck social.
The Kimberley Garden Club always welcomes new members. For more information, contact Nola at 250-427-1948.
It will soon be time to start flower seeds indoors. Seeds for begonias, dusty miller and geraniums can be started this month. Plant the seeds according to the package directions and either put them in a sunny window or under a grow light. I personally feel that a grow light gives a better result, as it can be put on a timer for consistent daylight hours, something the new seedlings need.
The Garden Club has web space at http://www.kootenaygardening.com. There are several pages in the Kimberley Garden Club section listing deer-resistant plants. In addition to hosting pages for the Cranbrook, Kimberley and Trail Garden Clubs, this website is incredibly informative with a wealth of gardening information and techniques.
I am happy to report that my Poinsettia is still happily blooming. It has been a companion to pots of blooming paper whites, blooming Christmas cactus, the spectacular blooms of amaryllis, and it will very soon be enjoying the company of forced hyacinths.
This week I brought my pots of tuberose, calla lilies and canna lilies into the house from my attached garage. I gave them a good watering and put them under my grow light to get an early start on the summer blooming season. I so enjoyed the double-flowered long-lasting blooms and incredible fragrance of the pot of Polianthes tuberosa ‘The Pearl’ on my patio last summer, that I am going to grow an additional pot (or two) of them this year.
I had such good luck with the flower seeds I started last year that I am looking forward to starting seeds indoors again this year. I checked the seeds I have on hand to see what I might need to buy and found several packages of basil seeds. I will sow these in a big tub and make pesto this summer. And, I can almost taste the wonderful flavour of home-grown baby lettuces in a salad.
I seem to be bursting with ideas for my garden this year, and since it’s too cold and we have too much snow to garden, I will just have to spend the next two months planning, plotting and drooling over pictures in books and nursery catalogues!
Happy Gardening.