Welcome Back Tea – 2017
Arbor Day Seedling Workshop
Saugatuck Middle School Fun
The SDGC has an annual holiday project that is created with the 6th grade classes at Saugatuck Middle School. Each child makes 2 small centerpieces. After they are completed, they take one home for the holiday and the other one goes to our 2 local nursing facilities; Grace of Douglas on Wiley Road and Golden Orchards just outside of Fennville.
Materials used are red cups, pine cones, unbreakable ornaments and ribbon. Walter Klimchek (Walter the Wonderful) leads the children on how to make the bows and how to assemble the arrangement. A wide variety of conifer branches are used, all collected and donated each year by Brendt Sheridan. All other materials used are donated by the Garden club members.
All members and Walter gather at the school by 7:45 am and get busy by trimming all of the conifer branches. The wonderful SDGC volunteers and Walter (the wonderful) help the children put the centerpieces together. A lot of fun and laughter takes place, especially trying to teach 12 year old boys how to make a bow!
Greens & Bows Galore!
On September 29th 2016 The SDGC made bows to be used on the greens that adorn public and government buildings in Saugatuck and Douglas during the holidays (see below). Beginners had a demonstration of bow making by Mary Lyons. There were a few laughs as one of us gave up and decided to watch! We made over 40 bows. The event was hosted by Celeste Teters and Sandy Gelman. Sandy made delicious soup!
On November 10th, the evergreens and bows were transformed into beautiful holiday boughs, thanks to the wonderful group of garden club volunteers. Also, a shout out to Jan Landry from Huntree Nursery who supplied the greens and her expertise. Below is Jan demonstrating the “how to”. Then Celeste presented Jan with a gift certificate to “THE KIRBY”. We truly appreciate her involvement in the garden club and her generosity. THANK YOU JAN!
And then we all jumped in……
A couple examples of our final products!
How to Put your Garden to Bed
Saugatuck Flower Power
District IV Meeting
The SDGC hosted the annual District IV Michigan Garden Club meeting on September 19th at the Douglas Community Church. The Michigan Garden Clubs, Inc is a member of Central Region and National Garden Clubs, Inc.
In addition to business meetings we had 2 presentations:
Paul Surian, from Blue Horizon Nursery and Gardens in South Haven, spoke about how they graft many rare and unusual plants including dwarf ginkgoes, conifers, Japanese Maples and more.
In the afternoon Bill BIrd spoke about The “Narnia” of the gardening world is not an imaginary place… it really exists!
And there were vendors galore!