Society Meeting for May 28

Christine Gill, the Delphinium Lady was awesome. She had a very interesting talk and great advice about growing delphiniums.

Christine says it is best if you grow your own delphiniums from seed. Most of the seeds in garden centres are developed in California. Plants grown from these seeds will not be at all prolific in seed production in future years due to climate differences. You will do better long term with seed produced in Canada or the UK. She recommends Pro-Mix for the seedlings rather than a soil/compost mixture and says you should use deep pots so the plants can produce long roots. In the spring, get the plants ready for the big outdoors by putting the pots outside for a few hours a day for acclimatization. Seed started by the end of March should be ready to bloom by July/August the same year.

Delphiniums come in lots of colours and shades – blue, purple, white, dark red, pink and lavender. They can grow to as much as 8’ to 10’ high and plants can be as much as 3′ across.

You can join the Ontario Delphinium Club. Their website address is: www.ondelphiniums.com The annual membership is $10, which gets you four newsletters a year and a free packet of seeds. You can email them at: info@ondelphiniums.com for more information.

Christine finished by producing some delphiniums she had raised and brought in for us to buy. She had obviously stoked everyone’s enthusiasm for these flowers as she sold out of plants very rapidly

We tried a different format for the meeting with the speaker starting at 7:00 and breaking for 15 minutes after the speaker was finished and then continuing with the business part of the meeting. The response to this format was very positive and so we will continue with this in September.

After the social break, the meeting moved to ‘normal business’ and announcements.

Garden Show Update from Anne Reeves

• All the vendor space, inside and out, has been snapped up. We have 50 vendors total.
• Cookies and squares are needed for the Victorian Tea Room.
• Posters and rack cards are ready for distribution.
• There will be 3 speakers at the Show: Susan Meisner from Spindlewood Gardens, Peter Fuller from Fuller Nurseries, and chef Tina Morey to talk about cooking with herbs. We are selling tickets for these speakers. They cost $7 to hear one speaker and $15 to hear all three.

Arline de Bourbon made an appeal for volunteers for the Hospital Gardens to help with a major cleanup

Mini-Show

This month, the mini-show had entries in only one category: ‘A miniature design using fresh flowers’.

As customary, the entries were judged by the members present at the meeting: Pat Stuckey [left image below] came first, with Angela Palmer second [centre], and Mary Jenkins took third place [right].

Click the images to see larger versions.

photo credits: Bert Jenkins