President’s Report | Cowichan Valley Garden Club

President’s Report, April 2024
The next Cowichan Valley Garden Club Meeting will be held Wednesday, April 10th, 2024, at Duncan United Church (246 Ingram Street). Meeting starts at 7:00pm. Doors will at 6:30.

We have lots of exciting events coming up in the next few months! The Plant Sale is on April 27th, the Flower Show is on May 25th and the Annual Bus Tour is coming up on June 20th. All the committees are hard at work to make these events fun and interesting. Please make some time in your busy spring schedules to volunteer and/ or participate! Success depends on you!

Bus Tour tickets will be on sale at the April meeting, both prior to the meeting and during the break. Don’t delay as we only have 40 spaces available. They are available on a first come, first serve basis. Join us Thursday, June 20th as we tour gardens in Nanaimo and Nanoose Bay. Tickets are $50.00, payable by cash or check.

Our speaker this month is Don MacWatt. His topic is Cyclamen: A Dynamic Genus for All Seasons. Don will share his knowledge and affection for these wonderful plants, including photos and information about different species, and growing conditions for best results in our region. He will have some plants for sale, cash only. Many or most are not readily available locally, or not in flowering size.
Don grew up in Scotland with knowledgeable ‘plant parents’ in a home with a walled garden equipped with a bank of environmentally controlled greenhouses, a grape house and conservatory to die for. Jumping continents and forty years, he ended up with a farm in the Cowichan Valley with water and
drainage challenges, and no actual knowledge of commercial nursery work or plant marketing. With much misplaced confidence, a small nursery venture was initiated and became the learning ground for cultivating hundreds of ornamental genera from which favourite species were selected and developed, mostly for a retail market. Several years of collecting from plant specialists in Britain, Holland and the US Pacific coast developed a network of supportive friends and information sources, including a relationship with Queen Elizabeth’s head of all the royal gardens.
When the nursery closed in 2010, Don selected a number of favourite bulbous and perennial plants to grow on Maple Bay Road. They included the genus Cyclamen, species peonies, genera from the lily family and others suited to both container and bed growing with good survival history in our region.
Only the most persistent and willing survived years of competing interests and shameful neglect at times. Don will share some of those Cyclamen species and a few other notables in his presentation.

This month’s Parlor Show decorative categories include:

“Branching Out” a line design of your choice
“Dominating Factors” – a design showcasing the principle of dominance
Miniature Design featuring but not exclusive to students of Connie’s Pop Up Design Class

Other categories include Flowering Quince, Camelia, tulips, fritillaria meleagris, narcissus, primula, radishes and preserved fruit as well as our usual Surprise Us and Anything Goes categories if you have anything delightful we just have to see. Please refer to the website for more information

We ask that Parlor Show Entries be placed on the table by 6:45 PM. This will give time for judging before the meeting begins. Thanks in advance for your assistance with this.

Your executive would like to make you aware of a change in the insurance coverage given to the club by membership in the BC Council of Gardens. In the past this coverage has covered all activities of the club regardless of where these activities have taken place.
Effective immediately the insurance coverage for activities at members’ private residences is not covered. This affects open gardens, the summer picnic, the Bus Tour and any workshops held at a member’s residence.
It is now the responsibility of members to ensure that they have sufficient home owner insurance coverage if they would like to offer their gardens and/or residences for garden club activities. Home insurance does generally include liability insurance for such activities but we advise everyone to double check their policy.

And one last item of interest. The executive is proposing the annual donation of $500 be awarded to an organization called Food First Chemainus which is a grassroots organization focused on food sustainability based here in the Cowichan Valley. Please check out their website.
https://foodfirstchemainus.wordpress.com/ We will be voting on the donation at the meeting.

Looking forward to seeing you next week.

Marlene Karmann

Grow a Row 2023

This year, the Cowichan Valley Garden Club is again encouraging members to Grow a Row of produce for the Cowichan Valley Basket Society (the food bank). The CVBS is a nonprofit, non-denominational, registered society that has been in operation since 1988 providing meals and hampers to hungry people and families in the Cowichan Valley.
Their latest statistics, from 2018, show that they provide over 3,400 bowls of soup, almost 4,000 sandwiches, and 350 hampers every month from their Garden Street premises. Fresh produce is always welcome, either to use in their meals or to add to their hampers.

Are you a food gardener? Plan now to incorporate Grow a Row into your garden. Whether you dedicate a single row of planting, one extra plant of each type you grow, one of your many raised beds, a quarter of your apple harvest, or if you just donate what you can’t use, the CVBS will welcome it all.
Are you a flower gardener? How about integrating Grow a Row with some Swiss chard, kale, or beets between plantings for their beautiful foliage? Grow some runner beans up an archway or pergola for vertical interest and their bright red flowers, then donate the healthy beans – the more you pick, the more flowers you’ll get. The bees and hummingbirds love them, and legumes add nutrients to your soil. Eggplants are stunning feature plants in a sunny spot, and sweet potato vines will sport lovely, purple flowers throughout the summer. Variety is the key here. Not only will a wide array of vegetable make for healthier hampers, but staggered plantings and harvests will provide usable amounts throughout the growing season, rather than bringing in a bushel of carrots all on one day.
Last year we had a goal of 100 pounds and donated a total of over 160 pounds of produce, so this year we’ve raised our goal to 150 pounds. Let’s see what we can do. Here’s how it works:
 Register with the club as a Grow a Row participant by emailing Judith Appleby at jbhappleby22@gmail.com. This isn’t absolutely necessary, but if you need some help harvesting or in getting your fruits and vegetables to the food bank, it would help us to know ahead of time.
 Let us know what you’re growing, when you expect to harvest, and whether you’ll need any help. Again, if you don’t know all that, it’s fine – but we’d love to know how many members are planning to participate.
 When your fruits and vegetables are ready, weigh them so we can keep track of how we’re all doing, and email the amount (and type of produce) to Judith. She’ll post the amounts on the club website and Facebook page.
 Take your donations in to the food bank at 5810 Garden Street, Duncan. If you can’t do it yourself, email Judith and she will arrange for a pick up.
Let’s show the valley what we’ve got! Register for Grow a Row today.

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Our mailing address is:
*PO Box 917, Duncan, BC, Canada, V9L 3Y2*