April 13th meeting & Figaro's Garden Workshops

 Hi Folks,

We’ll be having a Grandview Garden Club meeting this coming Thursday, April 13th, in person! We will meet at 7:30, at the 55+ Room at Britannia Centre. This is right across from the Info Centre at Brit on your left if you’re walking west from the Drive, before you get to the library. 

Note the time is 7:30!

Our speaker is GGC member Betsy Jones, artist and Master Gardener. Betsy studied Graphic Design and Communication Arts at Douglas College, and has twice been invited to Stiwdio Maelor in Wales, UK as an Artist in Residence. She will share some of her botanical art as well as her experiences in Wales, including her visit to the printmaking department at the beautiful University of Aberystwyth and to Bodnant Garden, an exceptional 80-acre National Trust property. Because it’s face-to-face, we will be allowing $4 drop-ins, so bring your friends.

We’ll have tea and cookies and door prizes. It’ll be just like the old days, pre-Covid!

Also, I received this timely message from GGC member Andrea Bellamy, below, and thought you all would be keen on some of the workshops Figaro’s will be offering this spring. (Apologies if you’re already on Fig’s mailing list and receive this info twice…)

Cheers,

Penny

Penny Street

grandviewgardenclub@gmail.com

Hi Penny,

I’m looking forward to meeting everyone at my first meeting with the club next week, but in the meantime I wanted to introduce myself and let you know about some upcoming events that may be of interest to members. I’ve recently joined the team at Figaro’s Garden (a dream job, really, after nearly two decades in post-secondary education coupled with a similar length of time doing garden writing and teaching). Part of my role at Fig’s is to organize workshops, and we’ve got three coming up this month:

• Houseplant Repotting Clinic - April 12
• Earth Day Tree Walk - April 22 (Free; marks the launch of our new Waste-free Growing line of products* and the kick off of our East Van Tree Mapping project**)
• Small-Space Tree & Shrub Workshop - April 26 The first in a series of small-space gardening workshops)

*A line of products packaged in responsible, plastic-free (and in some cases, refillable) packaging. The 21 products include indoor, outdoor, and specialty potting soils; fertilizers and amendments; and bird seed. 

**Hartley, the owner of Figaro’s Garden, has had the idea for an East Van Tree Map simmering at the back of his creative brain for years. Think of it as a map of interesting, rare, and unusual trees around the neighbourhood — kind of like those Hollywood Stars maps, but for stellar trees. If members know of any outstanding, publicly viewable trees in Grandview Woodlands, we’d love to hear about them.

Thanks, Penny! Please share part or all if appropriate.

Cheers,

Andrea