Uplands Garden Club Seedling Sale

Uplands Garden Club Seedling Sale

Dodgeville Farmers Market

Saturday May 15, 2021

8:30-noon

The Uplands Garden Club 2021 seedling sale will be a combination pre-order/ farmers market event. A list of seedlings for sale will be available from UGC members. There are many varieties of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables. We also have some popular annual flowers and native perennial seedlings and plugs for sale. 

All plants have been started in sterile potting mix: either seedlings or rooted cuttings.

Pre-ordered pick-ups and overstock sales will take place at the Dodgeville Farmers Market located in the municipal parking lot next to the United Methodist Church between Union and N Iowa streets (Hwy 23), Dodgeville, Wisconsin on Saturday May 15 between 8:30 and noon.

March 2020 Meeting: A Costa Rica Trip

During the winter of 2019, Ryan and Sarah Fox were able to take a 28 day vacation to Costa Rica with their three children, Ella, Nolen and Lily. They generously welcomed all to attend the Uplands Garden Club March meeting to see what they saw.

Topics touched upon included:
Native (Flora and Fauna)
Birds Butterflies
Marine life
Invasive species
Agriculture
Waterfalls
Adventures

Ryan and Sarah live in Mineral Point, with their three children and Copper the Golden Doodle. Dr. Sarah Fox is a Family Physician with Upland Hills Health in Dodgeville. Ryan is the owner operator of Fox Exterior Design LLC.

Lily with her Coati

The Foxes moved to Mineral Point in the summer of 2009, and immediately felt they were home. Since moving to the area The Foxes have been active members in the community. In 2012 Sarah wrote a cookbook “Super Snacks for Super Kids”. With a portion of the proceeds Ryan was able to build the School Garden at Mineral Point Elementary.

Ryan has been employed in the construction industry in one way or another for the last 30 years. He finished the Master Gardener Program in 2011, and soon after began doing small projects centered around gardens and blending them with natural landscapes. He started Fox Exterior Design in 2014 with the goal of making gardens and exterior structures which enhance and beautify what you already enjoy doing.

February 2020 Meeting: Explore Color in Your Garden

At our February meeting we had fun learning and exploring the power of color in the garden with a presentation and hands on activity led by Uplands Garden Club member, Roxanne Reynolds-Lair.

Topics covered included:

-Which colors are “warm” and which are “cool”

-What feelings and emotions are triggered when you combine colors

-Which color combinations create harmony and which create contrast

-What colors look best with your house and other permanent features

-How do you keep the color interest alive in different seasons

Roxanne is a Wisconsin native, born in Dodgeville. She spent several years in Los  Angeles as Chief Information Officer at FIDM/the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, a college of 7500 students focused on careers in Fashion, Interior and Graphic design. Roxanne and her team won several awards for their innovative implementation and use of technology.

Throughout her career, Roxanne had a passion for color which she used in her fashion and interior design choices. Now retired and once again back in Dodgeville, she continues to play with color. 

Roxanne recently joined the ranks of Wisconsin Master Gardeners, focusing on landscape design and creation of her bungalow garden in the Arts and Crafts style. In 2019, she created a display for the Iowa County Master Gardener booth on key points of landscape design incorporating the color wheel.

Before the presentation began we all selected a color palette of three colored squares of felt, then we used these colors to create our garden color "story board."

Thanks to Roxanne for a fun and informative program!

December 2019 Meeting: Annual Holiday Party

The Annual Uplands Garden Club Christmas Party took place on Wednesday December 4th at Stone Field Apartments. This year it was a meal and a movie!

Hot sandwiches and a simple meal were provided by the club.  Members could bring appetizers and/or desserts to add to the meal, but this was entirely optional. The emphasis for the evening was to keep things, social, and easy for everyone.

The movie, "A Man Named Pearl" tells the inspiring story of a self-taught topiary artist, Pearl Fryar. It offers a message that speaks to respect for both self and others, and shows what one person can achieve when he allows himself to share the full expression of his humanity...a real-life, uplifting, feel-good story.

Guest were welcome...children would enjoy the food and this movie, too! Donations (checks) were collected for the Southwest Wisconsin Community Action Program (SWCAP) Food Pantry.

October 2019 Meeting: How Plants Communicate with Simon Gilroy

The speaker at our October meeting was Simon Gilroy, a professor in the Department of Botany at the UW-Madison since 2007. Professor Gilroy is currently preparing for a NASA space flight botany experiment that takes place in December, 2019. 

He grew up in the United Kingdom, where “everyone is a gardener” and his research focuses on how plants sense the world around them and then how they use that information to survive and thrive. What happens when an insect chews on a leaf or we pick a flower? How much does the plant “know” about what is going on? Plants don’t have a brain but can they count? Dr. Gilroy’s research group uses time lapse imaging to follow how the whole plant responds to these kinds of events married with imaging techniques that allow us to see the action of the very molecules that make the plant work. 

He currently pursues these projects in settings that range from his laboratory at UW-Madison to experiments for NASA on the International Space Station. The title of his October 2 talk was “When I talk to my plants are they listening? How plants sense the world around them”.

The meeting was open to the public and held at the Stonefleid Apartments in Dodgeville on October 2. Professor Gilroy’s talk was sponsored by the Iowa County Master Gardeners Association.

September 2019 Meeting: Bird Studies

Our September 2019 program, titled Bird Studies, was an introduction to bird watching and feeding, and how to develop a bird friendly yard, presented by Chuck Horn. 

Chuck earned a degree in Resource Management from UW-Stevens Point and worked for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for forty years. After retirement he came back as a part time administrator in the boating safety program and Learn to Hunt and Learn to Fish Outdoor Education programs. Chuck has assisted in or coordinated Audubon Christmas Bird Counts for about 20 years and is currently the coordinator/compiler for the Fennimore Bird Count Circle.

Chuck and his wife, Diane Reuter, who assisted with the presentation, share many outdoor

interests and adventures together including, birding, wildflower identification, hunting, fishing, hiking and camping.

As with all of the Uplands Garden Club speaker presentations, this program was free and open to the public - people of all ages were encouraged to attend.

August 2019 Meeting: Potluck and Garden Visit

This month Alex and Ashley Pfister hosted the club at their home outside Hollandale for our annual summer potluck.

Alex and Ashley have owned their farm since 1995, buying it at auction from Agnes Laverty, age 95, who lived there from the age of 10 with her youngest brother, Frank, until his death in 1995 at age 85. Their parents, Frances and Mae Laverty built it in 1910 after the original homestead burned down. 

Alex and Ashley used it for hunting and a weekend “getaway” for 20 years before renovating/adding-on and moving in full time in 2015. Geothermal heat/cool and solar panels were installed. The 80 tillable acres have been in CRP since 1998, planted in prairie with evergreens on the edges. 

In 2005 they started raised bed vegetable gardening, being committed to growing as much of their own food as possible. In 2017 they replaced the wooden raised beds with 12 galvanized steel stock tanks, adding 6 more this spring. 

Mae had three separate small perennial beds in front of the house that have been made into one large bed, keeping her plants right where they’ve always been.

It was a perfect summer evening and the gardens could not have been lovelier. Thank you to Alex and Ashley for their hospitality!