Petal Pushers Garden Club Meeting Minutes, June 24, 2025

submitted by Pam Walker

Meeting Location: The Garden Center, Grace Barnes Room

Speaker: Rose Kern, Master Gardener - “Scavenger Gardening”

https://www.solarranch.com

Rose has a great philosophy about scavenger gardening: it’s a mindset. With that mindset, she is always looking for ways to re-purpose ordinary items like wooden boxes, string, straw bales, wire racks, etc. She had dozens of stories and examples of how she transformed those items into beautiful and useful additions to her gardens. She digs holes in her garden to compost her kitchen waste along with old coffee grounds from Starbucks, and she drives around her neighborhood in the fall asking for bags of raked leaves for composting. She uses small restaurant take-out containers with clear lids as small greenhouses. She’s a fan of “snarfing” plants and cuttings from her neighbors, and usually collects the seeds from her grocery store produce.

She encouraged us to read the Foxfire books. It was an entertaining morning, and here’s her story about her visit today with Petal Pushers (PP): https://www.solarranch.com/scavenger-gardening-updates/

Business Meeting:

We had three visitors at this meeting, two of whom had heard about Petal Pushers at the Garden Center’s 50th anniversary celebration. At that event, PP was in charge of making and selling popcorn, but the popcorn machine was defective, and it kept tripping the electrical breakers wherever we plugged it in. The garden Council is getting a refund for the cost of renting the machine.

We have two members who have decided to become associate members of the PP garden club. This means that they will be welcome to attend meetings but will not be required to host a meeting or assist in Council events. One had been the PP representative to the garden Council, so she will be replaced by another of our members.

Susan summarized the lessons learned from the April plant sale. We did well selling daisies and geraniums, but petunias didn’t sell so well. Next year, we’ll buy strategically with this in mind.

We also have a better understanding of our Square credit card reader. It really improved our sales at the spring plant sale, but the fees take a chunk out of our profits. We can decrease the fees we pay to Square by paying our club dues by cash or check.

Petal Pushers’ new fiscal and program year begins every May 1, so we have been busy finding great speakers and field trips to do in 2025-26. Please sign up to host a meeting on the sign-up sheet that Susan has. All this information is being typed into the new PP yearbook which will be distributed soon.

July 18-19 is the annual Council flower show with the theme “Christmas in July”. Petal Pushers will decorate a 6-foot artificial Christmas tree with the theme of “Christmas in July is for the Birds”. We will be making the crafts to go on the tree at the Garden Center on July 9 from 9:00 – noon. Please come help for a while. We won the club competition at the flower show last summer, so let’s do it again!

Next Petal Pusher meeting: July 22, 2025, 9:30

We will visit the home of a PP friend to see her beautiful yard, veggies, and bee hives. No speaker, just a nice morning. Due to the bees, NO BRIGHT COLORS OR BLACK CLOTHING! WHITE OR CREAMS, if possible.