Tag: 2020

Garden Club of Oak Park & River Forest > 2020

Nasturtium News, August 2020

Posted on by Lisa Cederoth & Mary Ellen Warner

Greetings! We have a lot of news this month….

• Programs: We are pleased to announce that Garden Club monthly meetings will resume, although we will be “virtual” for now on Zoom.

On September 9, from 1:00-2:00, Cindy Crosby will present “The Tallgrass Prairie: Grocery Store, Apothecary and Love Charm Shop.” Throughout Illinois’ history, people have used the prairie as grocery store, pharmacy, art supply shop and even a place to find love potions! Discover the charming stories behind these rugged native tallgrass plants and their beauty and utility in the garden today. Cindy is an author, master gardener and instructor in natural history subjects. Cindy Crosby/ We will send an email reminder to the membership a week before, and will send a Zoom link the day of the program for you to join us.

For those members unfamiliar with Zoom, many resources are available online. If you would like to chat with a board member about how to use Zoom, please contact us at president@gcoprf.org. We are not experts but will try to answer questions to the best of our ability so that every member can participate.

• LOGO: Our beautiful new Garden Club logo and letterhead are debuted in this newsletter! The nasturtium has long been the official symbol of our club. The original design was created around 1998 by a long-time member, the late artist and author Bobbie Raymond. Her nasturtium designs were used on our Club Directory for many years, with another of Bobbie’s nasturtium designs used for our 2016-17 Centennial Book. (An iris was used 2007-2016.) Reportedly, in 1942 the children of Oak Park chose the nasturtium as their favorite flower. It was adopted by Oak Park as its official flower. This summer, board member Gina Sennello, joined by committee members Kathy English and Cheri Fedota, commissioned local graphic designer Mary O’Kiersey to enliven and modernize Bobbie’s nasturtium for use in social media and our website. We hope you enjoy the designs, which are the product of much collaborative work and great attention to detail.

• Speaking of social media, Dori Bernstein, our director of website and social media, has been updating our website https://gcoprf.org/ and is developing our Club’s first Facebook profile page. While it is currently under construction, you can take a sneak preview at: Garden Club of Oak Park and River Forest Facebook Page.

• Many of our members also enjoy the unrelated “Oak Park Area Garden Club,” a Facebook public group, which is not part of the official Garden Club of Oak Park and River Forest, but which has many members in common and features interesting topics and discussions.

• The Garden Club has recently received five awards from the Garden Clubs of Illinois. We won a 3rd place Myrtle R. Walgreen Memorial Award for a Civic Project, and an Honorable Mention in “Planting for Pollinators.” Both awards stem from the Civic Beautification Project at the Oak Park Art League.

We also tied for 2nd place for our Garden Therapy program conducted by Sue Milojevic and Gina Sennello, and an award for greatest number of new members among clubs with 100-299 members. We received a Special Award rosette because the first two projects were eligible to compete nationally.

• As reported last month, the newly completed Oak Park Art League garden suffered some damage during a July storm, but is open for viewing. Elaine Allen is working on a magazine documenting the project, and this will soon be made available for purchase by the membership.

• Fun reads:
o Visit the Garden Clubs of Illinois website and view the November 1939 Garden Glories.

o Board member Joan Meister recommends The Illustrated Garden Book by Vita Sackville-West. See her book review at https://gcoprf.org/

o If you have any reading suggestions for books on gardening, botany, environment, or related topics, please contact us at president@gcoprf.org.

• Group field trips are off for now, but there are many options for independent visits. Always call ahead! Thank you to Kathy English and Elaine Allen, our field trip chairs, for most of these suggestions.

o There are still a few days left to view the trial gardens of Ball seed during customer days in West Chicago, open daily until August 14. Register at https://www.ballseed.com/CustomerDays/

o Another garden club has found VonBergen’sfarm i nHebron,ILto be an enjoyable way to spend the day and view some sunflower fields. https://www.vonbergens.com/http://klehm.org/garden-fair- 2020/

o Gethsemane Gardens Nursery-always a lot to see.

o The Gardens of the Baha’iTemple in Winnetka are open but the temple is closed at this point.

o Proksa Park in Berwyn. 3001 Wisconsin, Berwyn. The park is unusual with water features, native plantings and wildlife. Best to park on Wisconsin.

• PLANTCEDES: If you are interested in being notified when a neighbor has extra plants to share, or if you occasionally have extra plants yourself, please directly contact Gloria Backman at plantcede@gmail.com to join her email list.

• Our new 2020-21 Club Directory will be available for distribution after September 9. See the September Newsletter for details on how to pick up yours. If any of your information for the directory has changed since last year, please notify Joan Figatner ASAP: vpmembership@gcoprf.org

Stay safe and keep gardening!
Lisa Cederoth & Mary Ellen Warner, co-presidents

The Tallgrass Prairie, September 9, 2020 (Zoom)

Posted on by Bernstein

On September 9, from 1:00-2:00, Cindy Crosby will present “The Tallgrass Prairie: Grocery Store, Apothecary and Love Charm Shop.” Throughout Illinois’ history, people have used the prairie as grocery store, pharmacy, art supply shop and even a place to find love potions! Discover the charming stories behind these rugged native tallgrass plants and their beauty and utility in the garden today. Cindy is an author, master gardener and instructor in natural history subjects. cindycrosby.com

An Evite will be sent to the membership. Please RSVP to the Evite. The meeting will be conducted on-line. If the Zoom application is used the number of participants will be limited to 100. An email reminder will be sent to the registered members a week before the event; a sign-in link will be sent on the day of the program.

New members are always welcome. To attend the upcoming Garden Club virtual meetings, please click membership and join.

Meeting Recap
Our first Zoom meeting was quite a success! On September 9, Cindy Crosby presented The Tallgrass Prairie: Grocery Store, Apothecary and Love Charm Shop. Members were able to see one another and chat on Zoom for a few minutes before the program, just like old times, but without the hospitality table! Cindy took us through nature’s shop and listed the various prairie plants and their place in nature’s general store, whether as toys, dyes, food, or love potions. Cindy is a Prairie Steward at Morton Arboretum’s Schulenberg Prairie and at Nachusa Grasslands in Franklin Grove, IL. She recommends a visit to either of these prairies to see native plants and wildflowers firsthand, and also recommends Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Wilmington, IL. The more local Wolf Road Prairie is also of interest, as well as Kankakee Sands in Indiana.

• Books describing native plants and their uses, recommended by Cindy:
o Native American Ethnobotany, Daniel E. Moerman
o Medicinal WildPlants of the Prairie, Kelly Kindscher
o Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie, Kelly Kindscher
o Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Sylvan T. Runkel & Dean M. Roosa

BOOK REVIEW: The Illustrated Garden Book by Vita Sackville-West

Posted on by Bernstein

The Illustrated Garden Book by Vita Sackville-West

The author of this book was not trained as a horticulturist or designer. Neither was her diplomat husband, Harold Nicolson. Nevertheless, the two of them created one of the most visited gardens in England, at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, an Elizabethan ruin which they acquired in 1930. The creation of the gardens was a labor of love that lasted decades; their marriage, not so much! The garden was open to the public in 1938 and now run by the National Trust.

West wrote gardening articles for 15 years to help pay the bills. This 1989 book version uses many of her columns, beautifully written, filled with humor and lovely photographs. It is just the perfect book for all gardeners to curl up with during this unusual summer.

Their son, Nigel Nicolson, tells the story of his parents’ unconventional marriage and social connections in Portrait of a Marriage. This book sounds intriguing as well and I have it on my future read list.

Joan Meister

The Illustrated Garden Book

Nasturtium News, July 2020

Posted on by Lisa Cederoth & Mary Ellen Warner

July 2020 Newsletter

Hello Garden Club Members!

We hope you all saw the nice article in the Wednesday Journal, June 24th featuring the Garden Walks that we co-sponsor with the Friends of the Oak Park Conservatory. Since we could not hold it this year they featured one of the garden owners and the 27 year history of the Garden Walk. The article is available online at Oak Park.Com. Also see Dan Haley’s
Blog.

The Oak Park Art League was to be on the Garden Walk this year showcasing our 3 year club project. We received a thank you from OPAL Executive Director Jill Kramer Goldstein and Board President Kim Robinson for “funding and planting foliage and shrubbery in our Carriage House Gallery.” OPAL is to maintain the garden. Then during the June 26th storm, lightning struck two trees on the property to the west and they fell across the entire front court yard. The trees have been removed and Elaine Allen, co-chair of Civic Beautification has been in contact with them concerning insurance replacement. The most damage was done to a Hemlock, Magnolia and three Quick Fire Hydrangeas. Elaine had documented the entire project in a book of photography and plant material care.

The club gave two $3,000 scholarships to Oak Park River Forest High School graduating students, Elise Beile and Geneva Domantay. Elise will be going to The University of California Santa Cruz and is planning on majoring in environmental studies and sustainability. Geneva will be going to Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida and will be studying marine biology and environmental science. They wrote informative thank you notes to the club. Cherie Fedota is our Scholarship Chair.

Gina Sennello, Cherie Fedota and Kathy English have been working this summer on a logo/shield for our club to use as a signature design. Look for it on our Membership Directory in September.

Website – Dori Bernstein has been busy working on our Website, adding more information about the club.

Membership Chair, Joan Figatner reported that we had 9 new members after the Wednesday Journal article and a comment on the FaceBook group by Katrina Spears.

Mosquito alert! River Forest has mosquitoes that have tested positive for West Nile virus. So please, be sure to spray repellent before gardening and eliminate any standing water.

PLANTCEDES: If you are interested in being notified when a neighbor has extra plants to share, or if you occasionally have extra plants yourself, please directly contact Gloria Backman at plantcede@gmail.com to join her email list.

The September meeting has not as yet been planned. We have had a Zoom meeting with other Garden Club presidents as to how to maneuver under the new COVID-19 guidelines. The board will be meeting this month to discuss our programs going forward.

Stay safe and enjoy your gardens!
Mary Ellen Warner & Lisa Cederoth, co-presidents