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Standard Flower Show
September 17, 2016 Northland Mall Appleton, WI Paper Valley Garden sponsored a standard flower show held at the Northland Mall in Appleton, WI. Flower consists of three different design categories which included tablescape, leaf manipulation, and traditional designs. Examples of these can be seen in the photographs on the right. |
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Leaf Manipulation
September 12, 2016
Our Floral Design Committee organized this workshop and we spent the evening playing with leaves. It's amazing what shapes and forms can be made by folding, creasing, weaving, cutting, twisting, and shredding various plant materials. Below is a slide show of some of the activities.
September 12, 2016
Our Floral Design Committee organized this workshop and we spent the evening playing with leaves. It's amazing what shapes and forms can be made by folding, creasing, weaving, cutting, twisting, and shredding various plant materials. Below is a slide show of some of the activities.
Out and About at Memorial Park Gardens - Appleton
August 15, 2016
It was fun to visit the Memorial Park Gardens again. The Gardens sit in the western portion of Memorial Park which is located in north east Appleton at Capitol Drive and Ballard Road. The Gardens contain more than a dozen types of garden rooms or areas --- each with a different theme or type of plants growing in them.
We started the evening with a sandwich dinner in the Scheig Center. During our meal we were updated on what is happening in the Gardens and learned about their volunteer corp called the 'Friends of the Memorial Park Gardens.' To function well the 'Gardens' need volunteers to serve as greeters, weeders, and planters. Anyone interested in assisting should contact the 'Friends' organization.
After our dinner we toured the various the garden rooms and found the Butterfly and Prairie gardens looking colorful and spectacular. Please see the slide show below. The club members spent the remainder of our visit weeding the formal rose garden as a service project to the Gardens.
Garden Tour and Progressive Dinner
July 11, 2016
For the past five years our club has scheduled a summer garden walk and progressive dinner event. The gardens that we tour belong to our members and it is a private 'club members only' event. This year we visited three gardens in the Greenville and Hortonville area.
Our first stop was to see the relatively new memorial garden in Greenville dedicated to the September 11 attacks. The memorials were designed by Jim Beard a landscape architect and instructor at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton. The 9/11 Memorial includes steel girders from the World Trade Center, a spill fountain that makes reference to the new memorial fountain in New York City, and a pentagon shaped patio that represents the plane crash that hit the Pentagon in Washington, DC. A short distance away is the phrase "Never Forgotten." We encourage the public to see the memorial which is located in downtown Greenville one block northeast of the intersection of Hwy 76 and Hwy 15.
The second garden we visited is located on a family farm in Hortonville. We expected to see a home, a barn, and outbuildings; but to our delight we found that the home owners added a screened-in summer house in the garden so that it can be enjoyed all season long. The gardener also added a potting bench and quilt pattern stained glass window to the summer house. We enjoyed seeing many lilies, daisies, and herbs in bloom. And the appetizer course we ate was great too.
The third garden we visited is also located on a family farm just down the road from the second garden on the tour. The red barn greeted us warmly and we enjoyed watching the setting sun glow off the stone patio and golden fields. This garden had hanging pots of flowers and lots of hostas too.
Here's a slide show of the gardens we visited.
Einstein Middle School Global Gardens Scavenger Hunt
June 13, 2016
We all love to stroll through the garden and admire the sights and smells. But this week we were on a scavenger hunt in the Asian section of the Einstein Middle School's Global Gardens looking for: Japanese tree lilac, Japanese white spire birch, Amur maple, weeping forsythia, pygmy and Marshall barberry, hydrangea tree, cutleaf buckthorn, gingko, and stephanandra. How many of these plants would you be able to identify?
We worked in teams and raced to match the list of the plant names to the plants growing in the garden. Congratulations to our winners -- Alyssa and Sue! They were awarded with prizes for their effort. The win-win is that the permanent labels were attached to the plants to educate garden visitors about the specimens. The Global Gardens are lovely and can be seen in the background of this photo below. The photo was taken during the meeting portion of the evening's activities.
