With 25 enthusiastic members in attendance, the Tuesday, May 10, Lake Bloomer’s Garden Club meeting featured very interesting speakers from Marigold Nurseries.
Delightful refreshments were served followed by a very short business meeting chaired by President Pauline Balmer.
Then, guest speakers Brooke and Rayanne Smith from Marigold Nurseries had the group’s attention.
Brooke and Rayanne gave a cheerfully animated presentation on new plants for the season, plant paring and colour paring for your planters, hanging baskets or borders.
The new colour for 2011 is actually black – or an extremely dark purple – in petunias, oxalis, etc. They had several healthy samples on the table for our perusal and purchase.
A new alyssum was introduced called the ‘Snow Princess’ (white). It is larger than the usual one, re-flowers well into August and attracts beneficial insects to your garden.
The new yellow euphorbia ‘First Blush’ is deer tolerant, along with the variegated day lily which is hardy and has deep yellow to orange blooms. Some find the day lilies repel deer, some are eaten by deer; it depends on where you live. Milwaukee human sewage fertilizer was also suggested to repel deer and is beneficial for all plants in the garden.
Brooke and Rayanne brought the new ‘Pink Lemonade’ blueberry and suggested it for a well-drained planter with strawberries around the bottom and a new patio tomato that you could plant basil at the base as they like the shade of the tomato in the hot summer if we ever get one!
The jovial team had questions for us to answer in order to win a plant of our choice and we asked them too many to write down here.
At the end everyone got a free plant and purchased most of the stock Marigrold Nurseries had brought.
Everyone enjoyed the timely information and good-humored presentation and were very happy to take home some lovely new varieties to try out in their gardens.
For the next four months, the Lake Bloomer’s Garden Club will be on garden tours with no meetings.
For the first tour, Sunday, June 5, the group will attend the Cowichan Valley Garden Tour sponsored by Cowichan Valley Community Living.
Send an e-mail to cgaustin@shaw.ca for further information as to the Garden Club’s goings on.