June Garden News: Bloom Burst, Voting, and More

June E-Newsletter: Bloom Burst!

Swap Your Succulents in Rincon Valley Saturday

Gather up your best succulent cuttings and bring them to the Rincon Valley Library in Santa Rosa on Saturday, June 8. Sonoma County Master Gardeners are hosting an old-fashioned swap meet with a new twist. The library and the Master Gardeners are teaming up to host a succulent exchange. It's a chance to share cuttings from your garden and take home cuttings from other gardeners. Master Gardeners will kick off the event with a short presentation on growing succulents.

They'll also offer a short workshop on creating container succulent gardens. The free outdoor swap is from 10 a.m. to noon. For more information, visit sonomamg.ucanr.edu.

Community Gardeners: It's 2nd Saturday Workday!

Community Gardeners! This Saturday (June 8), is June's Community Garden Work Morning! It's from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and the weather forecast is sunny with a chance of hot. Bring water, a hat, your gloves and your favorite garden tool and come meet your fellow 2024 Gardeners and spruce up the common areas of the garden. Look for garden leaders to see if any specific tasks need doing. If not - there's always weeding! Be sure to record your volunteer hours in the red notebook inside the kiosk.

It's Time For...WGC Board Elections!Wait - Don't Run Away! Why Are You Hiding?

It's that time of year again...time to elect the Board of Directors for the Windsor Garden Club. We ARE an actual 501(c)3 community benefit nonprofit organization. That means we have to have an official Board of Directors. 

Wait - why is everyone running away? Come back here!

If no one else wants to volunteer to be on the board, our current slate of officers has agreed to serve another year if you elect them. The WGC leaders running for office again are: 

Teresa Mariani Hendrix, President
Sherri Benner, Vice President for Community Garden Operations
Anna Guyer, Treasurer
Serena Figueroa, Secretary
Angelita Llerena, Spanish-Speaking Community & Business Liaison
 
Non-voting Volunteers:
Jeanne Knapp, Education Activities Liaison
Mary Mariani, Cindy Fenton, Kathy Matonak, Community Garden Leadership Liaisons
 
If anyone else wants to volunteer to be on the WGC Board, please contact Teresa at tjmariani@gmail.com. If you would like to stage a coup and run against someone on the board, contact Teresa as well. If you would like to join the Town Green Community Garden Leadership Team, please contact Sherri at me@sherribenner.com.
 
Board members must be a member of Windsor Garden Club. Community Garden Leadership Team members should be current or former plot renters in the community garden. Please contact Teresa Hendrix by June 15 if you are interested in running for a board position (or becoming a board member as an "At Large" trustee to help out).
 
Elections will be held via e-mail before June 30.
 
Eligible voters are anyone who is an official, dues-paying member of WGC.

Are You an Official Windsor Garden Club Member?

Hey! Are you a member of Windsor Garden Club? June is Join WGC Month! It's also Renew Your Membership Month!
 
In addition to getting to vote in the upcoming election for board officers, WGC also has some fun benefits for official members:
 
*Ten Percent discounts at local nurseries, including Prickett's and Cal Flora.
*A Ten Percent discount at Atrellis florist on the Town Green. 

Click Here to go to the Windsor Garden Club Website and learn more about club membership benefits offered by local merchants. Of course, the best benefit of being an official, dues-paying member of WGC is (you choose):
 
Advance notice and registration and discounted ticket prices for the popular Holiday Wreath Making Workshop, and any other events WGC puts on.
 
The chance to make new friends and meet new people who also love gardening and the environment.
 
Knowing your dues support the operation of Windsor's Town Green Community Garden, the main community project of WGC. The club fundraises to keep garden bed rents affordable for Windsor seniors and families. Thanks to financial support from many local residents and businesses who provide donations, WGC is also able to offer roughly 30 of our 72 community garden beds for free to low-income seniors and families who raise veggies and herbs to feed their families.
 
Knowing that your $25 dues to our nonprofit organization are a donation, and tax deductible!

Ready to sign up? Your WGC dues will support food and fun for Windsor residents! Click Here to go to the Windsor Garden PayPal Page, and donate $25.
 
Then go to the Windsor Garden Club "Contact Us" page on our website, and fill out the form. In the comment box for "Other," write "I want to join Windsor Garden Club for 2024-2025, and I just paid my dues! Send me my membership card!"

(Pssst. We really will check to see if you paid our dues. We're sure you will...)
 
You can also join by mailing an old-fashioned check made out to "Windsor Garden Club" to us at:
 
Windsor Garden Club
PO Box 892
Windsor, CA, 95492
 
Be sure to give us your return address, your phone number, and your email address.

If you'd like to vote in the WGC Board of Directors election, please join and pay your dues by June 27, 2024. On vacation/can't join by then? Join anytime soon! We always appreciate your support!

Just Something Nice: Fan Mail!

Windsor Garden Club doesn't often get fan mail. Spam, and people from Canada and Connecticut wanting to join, or wondering about joining, yes. But fan mail? Nope. So THIS email made our day!
 
"Good afternoon,

I work with an environmental club for girls and we just wanted to reach out to let you know that the WGC pollinators webpage (www.windsorgardenclub.org/pollinatorgarden) was such a help to us! 
 
The girls came across it last month while they were doing research for our Earth Month projects.

The resources you've put together on that page led us to tons of information. We thought you'd appreciate hearing how much you helped us :)! Thank you again and have a wonderful day.

Lisa Garcia,
Lakeville Nature Conservancy "
 
We wrote back and thanked them; we're still waiting to hear back about just exactly where Lakeville is. We think it's the one in Lakeville, Pennsylvania. But what a nice letter! 

Cindy Fenton and spearheads several pollinator projects for WGC. Cindy and a few other WGC members are growing milkweed from seed and sellling at a discount and/or giving away milkweed starts to encourage 1,000 Windsor residents to plant them in their gardens. Milkweed is the only plant Monarch butterflies will use to lay eggs; it provides food for their larvae when they hatch.
 
Cindy and WGC's Jill Plamann also worked with WGC, the Healdsburg Pollinators, and the Town of Windsor to create the town's Community Pollinator Garden just north of the Town Green Community Garden fence, off the Town Hall complex. It's a place where you can wander among the plants and read up on how to use them in your garden to feed bees, hummingbirds, and pollinators. We need them all to keep the environment healthy, produce crops - and give us flowers!