Cranbrook Garden Club

The Cranbrook Garden Club was started in 1991, with eighteen members. Since then it has grown to 123 members in 2007. With population of about 10,000 it means that over 1% of Cranbrook citizens are the Club members.

The members meet once a month to share ideas and tips on gardening, listen to guest speakers and visit each other gardens and garden centers in the summer months.

The Club is very active in the projects aimed at beautification of Cranbrook, like the Communities in Bloom and the Downtown Hanging Basket programs.

Each May the Club organizes a plant exchange where members can trade their excess perennials, trees and shrubs, and a seed and house plant exchange in October.

In 1997 the Club held its first Open Garden Day, an annual tour of private gardens in Cranbrook and area.

The aim of the Open Garden Day is to showcase fine, local

gardens and raise funds for community beautification projects. Each year four to six gardens have been featured. The event usually takes place on the third Sunday in July.

Volunteers are posted at each garden, to answer questions and share experience.

The Open Garden Day Committee begins preparations early in the year (or even the year before), so that a variety of new and established properties, large and small, are included.

Some gardeners need more convincing than others that it is fun to let two or three hundred people into their yard for the day.

Club members step forward to co-ordinate the event, do publicity and advertising, design posters and tickets, organize volunteers and collect money from the three venues in town that sell tickets.

Garden hosts are supplied with large signs, guest books and Garden Club information brochures and they’re given a year’s membership in the Garden Club as a way of thanking them for opening their private sanctuaries to the public.

There are directional signs placed out on the day of the Show for the harder to locate gardens.

In 1998, the Public Garden and Labyrinth at Christ Church Anglican was included in the tour and the Anglican Church Women offered luncheon at the Church Hall. They’ve been doing it ever since. Floral Arrangement Competition entries are also on display at the Hall. The competition is open to all. Two winners are chosen by popular vote. Any bouquets not retrieved by the afternoon are delivered to local care homes.

In 2006 for the first time a Garden-inspired Arts and Crafts Show

and Sale was added to the day’s activities. The Show features botanical paintings, nature inspired photography, metal and wood garden art, porcelain, stoneware, Terra Cotta and more.

Open Garden Day is the Club’s major fund-raiser, with proceeds going to the Downtown Hanging Basket Project, the Ft. Steele Heritage Fruit Tree Program, gardens at the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel, the GROW Community Garden, a bench and planters for East Kootenay Regional Hospital and two prizes at the annual East Kootenay Fall Fair, among other things.

The price for the tour is $8, but there’s a $2 “drop in” fee if someone just wants to see a single garden.

The tickets include a map insert, with additional information about the luncheon, floral arrangement competition and craft show.

The information above from Gwenda Farrell, one of the founding members and the Club unofficial historian.

The Open Garden show has been steadily growing in popularity. There were hundreds of people visiting the gardens this year, 2007. There were six gardens on the show, four in town, small in size but big in the amount of the vegetation there, and two outside of town. They featured soft as well as hard garden landscaping: trees, shrubs, established perennial beds, borders and berms, annuals, vegetable gardens, ponds, creek, fountains, waterfalls, gazebos, pergolas, arches with climbing roses, greenhouses, garden art ...

General Information about Gardening

Gardening Techniques

Special Interest Gardening

Flower Garden

Fruit Garden

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