Horticulture

January 13, 2023

Chairman Beth DeBergh, The Garden Club of Warren County

Horticulture Field Day was held on May 21 2014, at Pharsalia, the 200-year-old family farm of Foxie Morgan in Nelson County. The event was amazingly successful. View details. View Photos.

The horticulture exhibits, “Bountiful Harvest” at the 2014 Board of Governors hosted by Dolley Madison were displayed at Montpelier and available for public viewing. The display called for a cucurbit creation using pumpkins, gourds  or squash to construct a container for a centerpiece to be filled with autumn plant material that has been gathered — grasses, seeds, nuts, berries, leaves, fall flowers, sprigs of bittersweet, etc. that are appropriate to the “Field to Feast” theme of the meeting.

The Horticulture Workshop was held on October 30, 2014 at the Kent-Valentine House, chaired by Dorothy Tompkins. Fifty-five club horticulture chairmen and club presidents were welcomed with a brief orientation. Featured speaker, Carol Heiser, Habitat Education Coordinator for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, focused her program on “Pollinators” and “Backyard Habitats.” Milkweed seed packets were given out at the meeting to recognize the decline of the monarch butterflies and to encourage planting milkweed.

The horticulture exhibit for the 2015 Annual Meeting in Norfolk was “Grandmother’s Garden: Heirloom Seeds and Bulbs.” Club horticulture chairmen were asked in advance to start collecting seeds for this heirloom seed packet exchange. Each exhibit included growing conditions, planting instructions, hardiness zones and a little bit about the plant on the seed packet or bulb bag. Many clubs also included the seeds origin, old photos, special memories, etc.

The 2015 Horticulture Award of Merit recipients were Maggie Sue Creamer, The Elizabeth River Garden Club; Betsy Eggleston, The Spotswood Garden Club; and Louise LaBarca, The Garden Club of Warren County.

Horticulture Field Day was held May 27-28, 2015, in Winchester and Clarke County. Attendees registered at Glen Burnie on May 27 with tours of the gardens and museum and a box lunch. Private tours began after lunch and included the “green roof” of the Discovery Museum and private tours of the gardens of Patsy Smith, Jo Ann Larson, Kathleen Quarles and Peter G. Bullough. Guests are also invited to take a self-guided tour of the garden at Handley High School — a GCV Restoration site. The second day, Clarke County tours included the State Arboretum of Virginia at Blandy and the private gardens of Carolyn Farouki, Tressa Borland Reuling, Ilona Benham and Elizabeth Locke. Departure and box lunches were distributed at Burwell-Morgan Mill, another GCV Restoration site, where visitors could see the mill in operation. Photos

A joint Horticulture and Conservation Workshop was held at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden on September 28, 2015. The topic was “Edible Landscaping for Wildlife and Humans.” The featured speakers were Cabell Cox, Principle and Founder of The Grow Company, Charlottesville; and Tanya Cobb, author, teacher and professional environmental mediator at the University of Virginia Institute for Environmental Negotiation. Tanya is the author of The Gardener’s A to Z Guide to Growing Organic Food and Reclaiming Our Food: How the Grassroots Food Movement is Changing What We Eat. The workshop was open to club horticulture chairmen, club conservation chairmen, club presidents or their representatives, GCV board members and GCV Horticulture and Conservation Committee members. Photos

The horticulture exhibit for the October 2015 Board of Governors meeting in Martinsville “REstore, REcreate, REcycle,” called for the following: “Construct a floral container from something recycled for a centerpiece to be filled with the succulents that you have chosen. Using recycled items as containers creates originality, making the usual containers seem boring! Think outside the box on what type of container can be utilized for your succulent display. Unleash your imagination and allow yourself to have fun with simple and ecofriendly materials. Remember one of the rules of garden design–plant in groups of three.”

The horticulture exhibit for the 2016 Annual Meeting in Alexandria was, “Alexandria, Where History Grows: Vegetables and Flowers for a Colonial Garden.” Horticulture chairmen were asked to construct a grouping of three Colonial herbs in a complementary container. In addition, for those true horticulturists wanting a challenge, there was an optional garden project — growing “Colonial-era” plants outdoors by seed in the winter in a bell jar or plastic milk jug.

The 2016 Horticulture Award of Merit recipients were Nancy Dickerson, The Princess Anne Garden Club; Tamara Gibson, The Spotswood Garden Club; Janet Hickman, Hillside Garden Club; Missy Janes, Fauquier and Loudoun Garden Club; Helen Junkin, The Princess Anne Garden Club; Linda Patten, The Elizabeth River Garden Club; Ann Reamy, The Rappahannock Valley Garden Club; and Casey Rice, Harborfront Garden Club.