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Earth friendly gardening in the Kootenays region of British Columbia, Canada |
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Sustaining connection between people and plants |
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Cranbrook Garden Club
Cranbrook, East Kootenay, BC
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Cranbrook Garden Club
hosts
15th Annual
Open Garden Day
Sunday July 10th, 2011
Six gardens
10:00 am to 3:30 pm Tickets $10 available after June 26th,
at:
- Top Crop Garden Farm & Pet, 2001 Cranbrook St. N.
- Lotus
Books, 33 10th Ave. S.
There is a map included with tickets.
Besides the garden show there will be
- Garden Day luncheon ($8) -
Anglican Church Women
- Floral arrangement competition -
Cranbrook Garden Club
- Plant and craft sale - Cranbrook
Garden Club
All events at Christ Church Anglican, 46 13th Ave. S.
Noon to 1:30 pm
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Panorama of
the Rockies
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| Meetings |
| Third Monday of the month, 7:00 pm |
Manual Training School building
adjacent to Cranbrook
Public Library |
| 1212 - 2nd St. N. |
| Contact Anna
at 250-489-2443 |
| membership
fee $10 per year |
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"... When your back stops
aching and your hands begin to harden You will find yourself a partner
in the Glory of the Garden."
- Rudyard Kipling
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All pictures on this page by the Club members Gwenda and
Jane, July 2007 |
The Cranbrook Garden Club was started in 1991, with eighteen members.
Since then it has grown to 123 members in 2007.
The
members meet once a month to share ideas and tips on
gardening, listen to guest speakers and visit each other
gardens and garden centers in the summer months.
The Club is
very active in the projects aimed at beautification of
Cranbrook, like the Communities in Bloom and the Downtown
Hanging Basket programs. |
Each May the Club organizes a plant exchange where members
can trade their excess perennials, trees and shrubs, and a
seed and house plant exchange in October.
In 1997 the Club held its first Open Garden Day, an annual
tour of private gardens in Cranbrook and area. The aim of the Open Garden Day is to showcase fine, local
gardens and raise funds for
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community beautification projects. Each year four to six gardens have been featured. The event
usually takes place on the third Sunday in July. Volunteers are posted at each garden, to answer questions
and share experience.
The Open Garden Day Committee begins preparations early in
the year (or even the year before), so that a variety of new
and established properties, large and small, are included. Some |
gardeners need more convincing than others that it is fun to
let two or three hundred people into their yard for the day.
Club members step forward to co-ordinate
the event, do publicity and advertising, design posters and
tickets, organize volunteers and collect money from the three
venues in town that sell tickets. |
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| Garden hosts are
supplied with large signs, guest books and Garden Club information brochures and they’re given a year’s
membership in the Garden Club as a way of thanking them for
opening their private sanctuaries to the public. There are directional signs placed out on the
day of the Show for the harder to locate gardens. |
In 1998, the Public Garden and Labyrinth at
Christ Church Anglican was included in the tour and the
Anglican Church Women offered luncheon at the Church Hall.
They’ve been doing it ever since. Floral Arrangement
Competition entries are also on display at the Hall. The
competition is open to all. Two winners are
chosen by popular vote. Any bouquets not retrieved by the
afternoon are delivered to local care homes. |
In 2006 for the first time a Garden-inspired
Arts and Crafts Show and Sale was added to the day’s activities. The Show features
botanical paintings, nature inspired photography, metal and
wood garden art, porcelain, stoneware, Terra Cotta and more. |
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Open Garden Day is the Club’s major
fund-raiser, with proceeds going to the Downtown Hanging
Basket Project, the Ft. Steele Heritage Fruit Tree Program,
gardens at the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel, the GROW
Community Garden, a bench and planters for East Kootenay
Regional Hospital and two prizes at the annual East Kootenay
Fall Fair, among other things. |
The price for the tour is $8, but there’s a $2 “drop in” fee if someone just
wants to see a single garden. The tickets include a map insert, with
additional information about the luncheon, floral arrangement competition and craft show. |
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The information above from Gwenda Farrell,
one of the founding members and the Club unofficial historian, 2007 |
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| The Open Garden show has been steadily growing in
popularity. There were hundreds of people visiting the gardens this
year, 2007. There were six gardens on the show, four in town,
small in size but big in the amount of the vegetation there, and two
outside of town. They featured
soft as well as hard garden landscaping:
trees, shrubs, established perennial beds, borders and berms, annuals,
vegetable gardens, ponds, creek, fountains, waterfalls, gazebos,
pergolas, arches with climbing roses, greenhouses, garden art ... |
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