Our June 3 meeting was delayed a few days due to severe weather. Janet Miller shared her expertise on how to dry flowers at our June , including a list of flowers and how to dry them. The dried flowers will be used at our November meeting with a wreath making demonstration.
Below are some screen shots from her presentation.
A small group gathered to discuss upcoming plans. Dues are $10. Any plants left over from the spring seedling sale will be sold at the Dodgeville Farmers' Market May 9.
The next meeting will be a presentation by Janet Miller on floral arrangements and gardens at Monticello, President Thomas Jefferson's home. Janet did floral arrangements for the home and events as well as Christmas decorating.
July 2025 Mineral Point School GardenWhat a turnout of kids and their families at the July Mineral Point Elementary School garden and savanna tour! Teacher Jessica Soots is doing a great job with the gardens at the school. Summer school kids helped with weeding and harvesting and chives was the winning produce. The Uplands Garden Club gave a grant to the school to help with accessibility to the gardens.
Teacher Jessica Soots talking to garden club
Janet Miller in her garden, viewed from Fountain St in Mineral Point. This is a garden designed to be viewed from above, but there are also pathways for walking through the Garden. Special features of the Garden to entertain children include: frogs, birds, hedge hogs and rabbit statues. There are also plants to touch such as Lamb’s Ear and Turtle Head.
April's program was all about backyard maple syruping. Roger and Gayl Stewart gave a great presentation starting with how to identify a maple tree to the last step of putting it in a jar. We learned trees should be at least 10 inch diameter at breast height. Sap flows when night temps are in the 20's and day temps in the 40's.
Forty of sap boils down to 1 gal of syrup. Those were just a few of tips they taught us from their years of making syrup. Making maple syrup is a lot of work, but their product was great tasting. They gave us a taste of their maple syrup on some delicious treats! Thanks for the wonderful presentation!
Becky Nelson visited her cousin Pamela who is co-owner of Grumpy Goats Farm in California where they produce organic olive oil. They have 8000 olive trees on 17 acres northwest of Sacramento. Pamela was connected by phone during the meeting so she could answer our questions while Becky showed and narrated photos she took.
This farm in the Capay Valley gets around 12 inches of rain annually so irrigation hoses deliver water to each row of trees. They produce 1000 gallons of olive oil in a good year. There are several large growers in California in addition to small growers like Pamela and only about 1% of the olive oil used in the US is home grown.
We last toured there three years ago after run off was addressed and major renovations were made to the foundation of the garage. Even to a discriminating eye it is impossible to tell major excavation took place as Sharon did an amazing job integrating plants back into the landscape creating a natural look.
Sharon dug over a hundred perennials up prior to the work and then planted them back despite a drought. Likewise, stones were selected and piled to be put back later into the landscape. Two large rocks on the side of the house appear to have been there forever as anchored so well in the terrace but actually are relatively new to the landscape.
Sharon selects perennials with a variety of textures and she has a large terraced slope to showcase this design element. In the shade Shredded Umbrella plants and perennial geranium are paired nicely for garden interest.
To the west was a planting of 20,000 trees and shrubs, mostly conifers with ash and oak that the Frost's planted in 2003, two years after moving to their property. The trees are now huge and go on and on; what an undertaking! The forest had been a treeless pasture and now provides a windbreak along with habitat including a recent bobcat. They also have 18 acres in CRP which they planted with a pollinator mix of native grasses and forbs.
Thank you Nancy and Joe for opening your gardens for us to enjoy.
It took us a while to even leave the parking area near their shed as Vicky showed us a shelf of prairie plants she had started from gathered seed. She also gave us a peek at the robin nest with eggs that had been built in one of her flower containers.
A gravel garden, which Vicky states is little if any maintenance was built on a remnant of a gravel pile from a driveway project. Lead plant and wooly thyme are among the thriving plants in it.
Vicky does not shy away from planting perennials such as lavender and hardy begonia which can be borderline hardy here. Near the house, they incorporated stone with various levels and curves, along with just the right complementary plants, to create a visual flow from nearby conifers, dianthus and thyme to large swaths of lavender, coneflower and other perennials and finally a smoke bush.
Thank you so much Vicky and Mike for sharing your lovely gardens with garden club members.
Harriet titled her program "Gardening on a Budget" but innovation and cleverness prevailed. Harriet and Glen explained that their property had been the site of a church. Rocks, rubble and other remnants of the past have been exposed through the years when gardening.
Harriet's well composted cherry tomatoes are planted where her mail carrier can pick some when walking by. The fence provides a backdrop to her perennial and annual border and vines including Sweet Autumn. She transformed turf into a symmetric herb garden with paths and a stone sculpture from Maine in the center. Glen has recently turned a swath of turf into a meadow for habitat and visual interest while cutting down on mowing.
Harriet pointed out a number of objects, many from England, now repurposed for utilitarian purposes such as containers. An old wooden ladder serves as a trellis for cucumbers to climb.
