Our October meeting!

Our next meeting is October 8th, 7:00 p.m. and the speaker is Bardia Khaledi and his topic is Native Plants.

Bardia is an educator, a native-plant advocate, and a seed-saver. He currently heads the Seedsavers group at VanDusen Botanical Garden. Bardia sees gardening, and the creation of gardens, as an exercise of symbiotic co-existence with nature. His gardening philosophy focuses on diverse groupings of plants that are valuable for their flowers, seeds, and fruits because they attract wildlife and create self-sustaining ecosystems that nourish us. 

Find out more about Bardia at his beautiful and informative website: http://plantprofusion.com/

Note, also, that we now meet in the Britannia Community Centre’s LRC (the Learning Resources Centre), which is under the VPL library branch. You enter the meeting room from the south side of the library building. 

Our meetings are on the second Thursday of the month, 7:00 p.m.

We hope to see you there!

Upcoming Events!

Pt. Grey Chrysanthemum Association — Early Chrysanthemum Show
Saturday, September 12, 12–4 pm & Sunday, September 13, 10 am–4 pm
Location: Floral Hall, VanDusen Botanical Garden  

Admission: Free 

Alpine Garden Club of BC — Fall Plant Sale 
Saturday, September 19, 12 pm–4 pm. 

Location: Floral Hall, VanDusen Botanical Garden
Admission: Free

Dried Flower Arrangers' Sale
Friday, September 25, 2–4 pm
Saturday, September 26 and Sunday,  September 27, 10 am–4pm  

Sale of dried flower topiaries, centrepieces, wreaths, bouquets and arrangements created with materials grown at VanDusen Botanical Garden.

Location: HSBC Arrival Hall in the Visitor Centre, VanDusen Botanical Garden
Admission: Free

Annual Compost, Soil and Bulb Sale
Saturday, September 26, 10 am–3 pm   

Bulb Location: Entrance Plaza off the parking lot

Compost, Soil and Manure Location: West end of VanDusen parking lot off 37th Avenue.

Products: 
Red Label Topsoil from high grade organics

Brown Label Manure: essential organic mix 

Compost from Harvest Power

Price: $5 per bag (about 20 litres / 20 lbs.)

PRE-­ORDERS: Pre-Order at http://www.heavyethics.com/VanDusen 
Pick up for Pre-­orders (west end of the VanDusen parking lot):
Wednesday Sept. 23rd, 10 am–12
Thursday Sept. 24th, 12–2 pm
Friday Sept. 25th, 10 am–12

Our September meeting!

School resumes this week, and — happily — so does the Grandview Garden Club! Our meeting is Thursday, September 10th. And from now on we are meeting in the Britannia Learning Resources Centre (the "LRC"), the meeting room in the basement under the Britannia library branch (spot 38 on the map below). Enter where the wheelchair image is.

Our speaker for this month is Gwen Odermatt. She will speak to us about choosing the right plants for Vancouver’s conditions and climate. Our conditions and climate seem to be shifting rather dramatically these days, so this is a very pertinent topic!

Gwen is a lifelong gardener whose interest in the natural world led to a degree in science at the University of Alberta. For the last 20 years she has operated Petals and Butterflies, a farm nursery in Langley that specializes in growing plants that attract butterflies and other beneficial wildlife to gardens. The nursery offers an always-interesting collection of rare and unusual ornamental plants that she sells via consignment; for example, her plants can be found in the perennial section of the VanDusen Plant Sale.

She is on the Selection Committee for Great Plants Picks, is a member of the Vancouver Hardy Plant Group and was on the organizing committee for the Hardy Plant Study Weekend 2013, and belongs to the South Surrey Garden Club.

Her garden has been open recently for local, national, and international tours, and is open to garden clubs by request.

Free young butternut tree to good home

Ian Marcuse has a small butternut tree in a pot that he would like to give to someone who would provide it with a suitable home. It's an offspring from the gorgeous butternut that once lived in the middle of Salsbury Garden (at the corner of Napier and Salsbury), pictured below, right.
You could let me know if you're interested, and I'll forward your info to Ian.

BEE FREEBIE

Saturday July 25, 11:00 - 1:00

A free tour to learn about honeybees. Learn from experienced beekeeper and Master Gardener Tony Puddicombe about the fascinating world of bees.
To register go to https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/kits-honey-bees-talk-and-tour-tickets-17556966359
The event will start with a 20 minute talk about honeybees and native bees and how you can introduce them into your garden. This will be followed by a question and answer session.

The group will then take a short walk to view orchard mason bee houses and a working honeybee hive. You can put on a bee-suit and look inside a hive as well.
We will finish with a honey tasting session-you will discover that local honey has many different flavours!. This will be interesting for anyone just interested in bees or in possibly keeping bees.

This event is made possible by a Neighbourhood Small Grant from the Vancouver Foundation. The grant is administrated by Kits Neighbourhood House.
To register:
The event is free but you must register to attend - limited to 30 people.
To register go to https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/kits-honey-bees-talk-and-tour-tickets-17556966359

Posted by Christine Allen

Meeting Thursday, July 9th!

For this month’s meeting we’re trying an experiment. It will be something like speed-dating for gardeners. We’ll have several stations set up around the room with host experts at each one, and you will be invited to move from table to table to learn about and discuss different topics. 
I’m not 100% sure yet who all the experts will be or what all the topics will be — Janet’s looking after the final list —  but it is guaranteed to be an entertaining evening. Please do join us. It will be our last meeting at 1739 Venables (the former Astorino’s).
Note that we won’t be having a meeting in August, and, starting in September, we will be meeting at the Learning Resources Centre (the LRC, the room under the VPL Branch at Britannia).
Cheers and see you Thursday!
Penny

Strathcona & Cottonwood Gardens need help...

Posted for Strathcona Gardeners Joanne Hochu and Sylvia Parusel:

Hello Gardeners,

The City of Vancouver is planning the False Creek Flats future. Its website talks about upcoming planning for the area bounded by Terminal, Clark, Prior and Main Street. Our gardens lie within the planning area and there is consideration for running a major truck arterial road along the bottom of our garden along Malkin Avenue, taking away 30% of Strathcona garden and 70% of Cottonwood Garden.

The city is asking for crucial public feedback. The City describes the False Creek Flats as a major job centre and they're working with the Vancouver Economic Commission to plan transportation throughways, waste management infrastructure, and food distribution and production policies. We have to be heard about the importance of not dismantling Strathcona Community Gardens.

As we told them last Thursday at a planning workshop, the Gardens provide citizens with so many benefits that it doesn't make sense to have it destroyed in any way.

To insure the viability and sustainability of our gardens, we need all gardeners to go to the city website as soon as possible and take the survey on the upcoming plans for this area. Please give the city the feedback that gardeners do not want a truck route along Malkin Avenue and ask your friends to go to the website and state the same. By rejecting the widening of Malkin Avenue, that does not mean that traffic will increase on Prior Street. There is hope and consideration that National Avenue, and not Malkin, will be the widened traffic route for traffic.

The link to the survey is:

http://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/false-creek-flats.aspx

and look for the blue Flats Feedback  'take the survey' about halfway down the page. This is important and a simple thing to do!  Please take a few moments to do this to help preserve the gardens.

Thank you,

Strathcona Gardeners,

Joanne Hochu and Sylvia Parusel