Our June Gardening U event was an enjoyable summer activity centered around creating fairy gardens.
Participants began by selecting components from a wide array of items, followed by planting grass and various plants, as well as setting up fairy houses, fences, and pathways.
Each attendee left with their own fairy garden, resulting in plenty of smiles!
The guest speaker for August 2023 Gardening U was Steve Brack, who is an expert on succulents and cacti not usually found in ABQ. He and his wife have taken numerous trips to other countries, including 20 to Africa, to collect cactus seeds. They have had great success in growing cacti from seed, and opened a nursery called Mesa Garden in 1976. For the GU presentation, he brought dozens of photographs of uncommon cacti and succulents that he has grown from seed, and told some stories about where the seeds were collected. The door prize for the evening was a succulent he donated.
The next GU will be September 6 @ 6:30 p.m. with Suzy Andrego teaching us how to plant flower bulbs for spectacular blooms next season and beyond. Come hear the expert and Master Gardener!
The guest speaker for Gardening U’s July class was Matt Strong, the current president of the ABQ Beekeepers Association. His presentation was about European honey bees, and he brought several types of empty hives, honeycombs, and a 5-gallon bucket of honey that we could examine.
He suggested the obvious connection that we’re a garden center with lots of flowers, and he’s a beekeeper with lots of bees, so we should partner up and have him install a beehive in our gardens! Our door prize for the evening was a jar of Matt’s honey.
Next month’s GU will be August 2 @ 6:30. Steven Brack will speak on “Adventures in Hardy Cacti and Succulents - Beyond the usual cacti and succulents found in the garden”. Steven is always experimenting with new types of plants in the local decomposed granite soil in the ABQ heights.
