The Yorkton and District Horticultural Society will be holding their next regular meeting on Wednesday, April 17 at 7:00 p.m. at SIGN on North Street in Yorkton. The topic will be 鈥� Fairy Gardens鈥�. This is an interesting and creative gardening project for gardeners of all ages, and if you have a little sprout that would like to try gardening, they would love this! Remember, you don鈥檛 have to be a member of the group to come to the meetings. Everyone is welcome!
Are you planning a trip to Saskatoon in the coming weeks? You may be interested in attending some of the seminars that the College of Agriculture and Bioresources has on offer. Log on to gardening.usask.ca/public-workshops/gardening-workshops and see a full listing of topics such as Backyard Vegetable Gardening, Native Plants for Prairie Gardens, Bumblebees, The Magic of Seeds: Collecting and Germinating, and many more. These are one-day seminars that no doubt pack in a lot of information for gardeners! For your own interest, this is a good site to bookmark so that you can easily check upcoming sessions, on-line learning opportunities, and even plant sales that the U of S has later in the season.
As my Great-Grammie always said, you never stop learning! For gardeners, there is a wealth of information available from many sources, so we have no excuse not to broaden our gardening horizons! Now is the time to do so, before we start our outside work!
Right here at home, the Yorkton Public Library has a wonderful selection of horticultural books on a wide variety of topics. Everything from houseplants to orchids to landscaping! Even if you borrow a book that is out of your usual gardening area, you will still learn something or be inspired to perhaps explore a new garden avenue.
Seed catalogues also offer great information as well as seed offerings for the year. The descriptions of all the plants include practical information about soil and light conditions, growing habits, and the type of crop that the plant produces. There are always new varieties of plants becoming available, and there is almost certainly one that is right for your own particular growing conditions, so how can we resist giving them a try? When we chat, I am always encouraging you to try at least one new thing each year. Not only is it a good gardening experience, but it鈥檚 fun to give our planters or flower beds a new look. Please, please don鈥檛 stick to the same old, same old. If you really love a certain look, that鈥檚 fine. But you can still try new plants in at least one container! And one more thing: when you think about the years of work that are needed to create a new variety of a certain plant, we should give them a try!
If you enjoy magazines, there are many fascinating garden magazines available. These are often great to save as reference material. I put sticky notes on pages that I want to refer back to time and again, and then it鈥檚 easy to find certain information.
And last but not least, new members are always welcome at the Yorkton and District Horticultural Society meetings. We meet once a month, and our meetings always have a presentation on an interesting and educational topic. But best of all, you will find enthusiastic gardeners who simply love to talk about gardening! So there is always someone who can answer questions or share a gardening experience or encourage you in some way.
Learning new things keeps us interested and interesting! Gardening is such a healthy, fascinating, challenging hobby that we can keep learning through every season of the year鈥� and of our lives!
Visit us at www.yorktonhort.ca to see what鈥檚 鈥渃oming up鈥� and have a great week!
