This Month's News...
Next meeting: October 16th
New meeting location for the 2017-2018 Club year:
Falls Event Center (Evergreen Campus in Highway 18)
510 NE Captain Michael King Smith Way
McMinnville OR 97128
(It is located behind the Water Waves building with the airplane on the top.)
This Month’s Speaker:
Roses—Insect Control and New Rose Varieties
Rich Baer will focus on the most common insects found in the rose garden and the newer varieties of roses recently introduced. He will be able to take questions on any other aspect of roses.
Rich Baer has twice been president of the Portland Rose Society and has been a board member for 30 years. He has grown roses since he was six years old and his current garden has over 1000 plants. He does extensive propagation of extinct varieties that are then auctioned off as a fund raiser for the Portland Rose Society. He has been a rose photographer since 1990 and has worked for almost all of the major companies to supply pictures for their catalogs.
Rich says there are other things besides gardening and sent us this picture!
Upcoming Events
- April 10 – Board meeting at June’s
- April 14 – Field trip to Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden
- April 24 – Clean up Third Street
- April 26 – Chemeketa’s Salem Campus horticulture plant sale
- April 27 – Pioneer District Luncheon – $20, pay treasurer by April meeting
- April 28 – Field trip to Wooden Shoe Tulip Fields/ Seabright Gardens
- April 30 – Yamhill County Master Gardeners Plant Sale DON’T MISS THIS!
- May 04 – Hypertufa Hands
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE – April 2017 Elaine P.
April means Spring!
It was a long winter. Gloomy as it was, we must be thankful that the drought was ended. I personally rejoiced those few times I got to see Mt Hood. By the end of last summer, the only white on it was the melting glaciers. All the rest was bare rock. Now it is all bright and white and so breathtakingly beautiful.
Although the sky continues to drop water on us, they are now showers rather than storms. We get to see intervals of blue sky and occasionally the sun! Every day more flowers appear and the trees are bursting into bloom. The hours of daylight are getting longer and warmer. Soon, we will be happily working in our gardens. The aches and pains and occasional allergy attacks are sacrifices we gladly make, year after year after year. So grab the boots and the ibuprofen and get ready. Our yards are calling. The soil is almost ready to be worked. All the nurseries are opening. The plant sales are almost here. Get some dirt on our hands. After our long, wet winter, our hearts are oh so willing.
A Message From Your Tour Chair
by Marlene Petersen
This year’s garden tour and Faire will include art work from the artist, Sine. Sine specializes in cut paper work. She took this year’s theme, “Planting the Seeds to Restore Tomorrow” and used whimsical and brilliantly colored papers to cut flowers, bees, fairies and a ladybug. The artwork was donated for use by Trudy Mackel. Thank you to both Trudy and Sine.
March/April
We need you. We will need a morning and afternoon hostess for each garden. We also need two greeters helping out front waiting to help people by checking for tickets and selling tickets to our viewers. It never hurts to ask or offer the friendship of a garden club membership. I will never forget when Ann invited me. I thank her and all of you for making my garden club experience so special. We have already signed up 8 hostesses and 1 greeter. Also a special thanks to the committee chairs who work so hard. Without all of us none of us are successful.
Upcoming Field Trips
by Ann Silverthorne
- March 31 – End of the Trail in Oregon City
- April 14-Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden with box lunch
- April 28-Wooden Shoe Tulip Fields, price for car admission is $20 or $5/per person. Second stop will be at Seabright Hosta Gardens.
- May 12- Three nurseries, bring lunch; Bauman’s, Egan‘s and Schreiner’s Iris Gardens.
- June 21 – Thyme Garden Herb Company in Alsea (2 hour travel time), lunch $30.
Any questions please call or email Ann.
April 24 Third Street Cleanup
It’s that time of year we volunteer our time to clean up the tree wells and planters of downtown Third Street. So, put on your gloves, garden club aprons, jeans and come help! Also bring clippers, brooms, blowers, knee pads??, and drinking water. We will be treated to lunch downtown so we need a head count at our April 17 meeting. For over a dozen years the Garden Club has provided downtown Third Street with this gift of a spring cleanup. Let’s show up in force to tackle this great project. Meet at 9:00 at the city parking lot across from Macy & Sons. Team areas will be organized there.
Contact Jan Clay for more information.
Some Gardening Wisdom – by Judy Eggers
When asked if I could write something for the newsletter this month, I immediately went to my copies of the Dulcy Mahar’s books. These are a compilation of her columns for the Oregonian newspaper. One of her quotes “Gardening is like spaghetti,” she muses. “Everybody loves it, but everyone makes the sauce differently. And it’s still good.”
Here is a list of gardening changes of the past 20 plus years, according to Dulcy.
- Go organic.
- Lawns shrink.
- Shrubs and perennials mix in beds.
- Old roses and shrub roses make a comeback.
- Gardeners step up interest in autumn plants.
- Challenging the climate zone becomes a sport.
- Gardens go vertical with vines, trellises, arbors.
- Interest turns to foliage, texture and color.
- Glazed pots replace terra cotta.
- Art and ornament find a place in gardens..
- Water becomes integral, from pots to ponds.
- Gardens Northwest gardeners pursue cutting- edge plants.
- The following is a list of underused plants, also, according to Dulcy.
- Acanthus millis (bear’s breeches): perfect foliage perennial
- Clematis texensis “Princess Diana”: exquisite rosy-pink bells
- Fritillaria meleagris (checkered lily): weirdly beautiful bulb
- Primula vialii (a primrose): striking color for the rock garden
- Kirengeshoma palmata (yellow waxbells): great foliage, late blooming
So, as you are roaming the aisles of the nurseries now that spring is here, keep these in mind to fill those vacant spaces in your garden.
New Sprouts by Rosemary Vertregt
Please welcome back Sally Thompson, a former member of our Club! She and her husband Milt are 29-year residents of a three acre place just outside of Newberg, where Sally started a garden club a few years ago. She is an active and experienced gardener who has held positions of leadership at Club, District, State, and Regional levels, and often serves as a qualified judge at flower shows, so she knows her posies! Because of Milt’s career as a Marine fighter pilot, the Thompsons lived in 13 houses in multiple states and various climates, including three years in Hawaii. Perhaps this was when Sally came under the spell of gorgeous tropical plants, since she now has a greenhouse full of bromeliads! Sally has skills in flower arranging, especially in the Japanese style of ikebana, horticulture, and propagation, making her a most valuable resource for our members. And, the best things about Sally are that she’s fun and smart and generous…..she has agreed to be part of our “Flower Arranging Fun” panel for the May meeting! Welcome, Sally!
Suzanne Beukema joined our club exactly one year ago, and is very much involved already! {This writer is most embarrassed to admit her slothful ways}She and husband Rick are happily settled into the home of our former member Cindi Miller, which puts them on the same street as members Ann Silverthorne and Marlene Petersen. Not only do these three ladies share addresses on Sunrise Court, but they have banded together as leaders of our 2017 Garden Tour…Bravo!! Suzanne is retired from a career as a manager of commercial construction projects, the final one being on the island of Hawaii. She has lived in several states with differing climates, including Minnesota, Colorado, western Michigan, and California, and has always grown plants. She says she would like to expand her gardening horizon, so she’s happy to know that almost everything will grow here! Yard landscaping, crafts, and propagating are things of special interest, as well as finding great places to buy plants. As for family, Suzanne has two sisters living in Hillsboro, and her husband Richard…who has joined our club as of last October.
They include new information for prospective members as well as information for members to help understand the history of McMinnville and our club like this:
McMinnville Garden Club Community Projects
The proceeds from our Garden Tour & Faire are reinvested within our community providing scholarships, informational programs and garden art/horticultural community projects. We have funded public benches, hanging baskets, lamp posts, Yamhill County Historical Museum projects, the plantings at the West End of town, Third Street plantings, a Blue Star marker commemorating veterans at Evergreen Aviation Museum and given multiple scholarships to Yamhill County students studying horticulture. In addition we do community service projects such as maintaining both the Post Office and West End plantings, as well as maintaining the Public Library’s indoor plants, support the Community Garden’s Children’s area and do an annual spring cleanup of Third Street.
Historical Projects from 1926 to 1960
– More info about 1960 + to follow:
McMinnville Garden Club began when several folks created a garden interest group in the McMinnville Civic Club in 1926. In 1927 some of this group helped to incorporate the State Federation. In 1928 the group dropped from the Civic Club and created their own by-laws to incorporate the McMinnville Garden Club.
Throughout the years the club has been known for its dedication to improving the city’s plantings and educating its citizens about the beauty and benefit of gardening. This is a list of some of the projects they undertook from inception to 1960. There are several years without information so this is only what I could find documented in old files. More will be highlighted in the future. Stay tuned!
- 1931: Monthly exhibits of flowers in prominent downtown locations; weekly flower arrangements for Chamber meetings; planted 5 shrubs and zinnias + in City Park; bird house contest at grade schools.
- 1932: (45 members) Bicentennial plantings along Highway 99W; donated garden books and magazines to the Public Library; grade school bird observation essay contest; Red Cross donation; donation to the milk fund for schools.
- 1933: Special project to provide 300 rose buds for convention.
- 1935: (77 members) Decorated Christmas trees for the Public Library (lasted for over 10 years but had to move to the Armory as it grew); decorated the Fireman’s Blossom Dance.
- 1943: Started planting Pink Dogwood Trees on the Linfield campus. (Continued until 1966!)
- 1946: (50 members) Began the tradition of making the bouquets for the Linfield Homecoming Court.
- 1947: The Men’s Club was started.
- 1953: State Convention was held at Linfield; 20 trees decorated for the holidays for the public at the library; public garden workshops started.
- 1959: (42 members) 2,000 visitors to town to view the Christmas Tree show!; Spring Flower Show started.
- 1960: Men’s club has planted 500 azaleas and shrubs around town.
