Helen Nicolaou, Pine Ridge Garden Club
With the first day of spring behind us, we can now enjoy the extra daylight hours planning how to spruce up our personal outdoor space.
Some Top Trends in Gardening, for 2024, focus on and include a wide variety of gardening styles, such as:
Naturalistic Planting: by incorporating plants, grasses and wildflowers blending with the surrounding environment we are welcoming pollinators and embracing a natural approach.
Pollinator-friendly plants: focus on creating a garden with plants which attract and nourish bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. Adding a mix of annuals, perennials and flowering shrubs will bring an important supply of nectar throughout the gardening season.
Drought-Tolerant Flowers: have the ability to withstand dry spells with minimal water, making them an environmentally conscious choice which are low maintenance.
Edimental Gardening: these plants offer a dual purpose to the garden while being pleasing to the eye, the use of herbs also is a practical choice in elevating culinary dishes.
Gravel Gardens: also known as rock or alpine gardens mainly use gravel, pebbles and stones, and are becoming a popular choice, due to the low-maintenance for dry, poor soils.
Rain Gardens: are created to control stormwater runoff, efficiently using and filtering rainwater naturally. The use of plants specifically chosen for their ability to absorb excess water and filter out pollutants.
Lastly, we will share the importance and use of sourcing local seeds for your garden needs. These seeds have adapted to the regions soil, temperature and rainfall patterns and will make all the difference to the final outcome of your plants. West Coast Seeds offers and produces Canadian non-GMO seeds, and can be found at Vandermeer Nursery and Sheridan Nursery.
Libbi Hood, President, welcomed members and guests to the start of the new gardening season. The meeting was well attended and the Finger Food Buffet had many delicious offerings. Thank-you to everyone for their donations.
David Retallick spoke on Pruning 101 and the importance of pruning trees and shrubs regularly, to keep broken, overgrown and diseased plants in check. Thank-you David for your tips.
Coming up, Tuesday April 2nd, at 7:30, we will have Lydia Wong present her personnel passion, “Bees and Wasps, The Good, Not So Bad and The Beautiful” Lydia is working on her PhD, at the University of Ottawa, and has spent 5 summers in the Colorado Rockies and big cities exploring the impact of warming and drying climate on Wild Pollinators. A Q and A to follow.
Just a reminder, overwintering beneficial insects and pollinators still require the dead fall plant coverage until temperatures are consistently 50f or 10c. To ensure healthy pollinator populations please resist raking leaves from the garden until then.
Enjoy the refreshments, and see Shelley for Door Prize Tickets. Members remember to Lug-A-Mug. Guests are always welcome. Join us for an informative evening. See you there.
Pine Ridge Garden Club- Where Gardeners Come to Bloom
To become a new member visit us at our website, at pineridgegardenclub.com