Countryside Garden Club  

Trips with Garden Buddies

Monticello Brookside  

Garden club links

Countryside Website
National Capital Area of Garden Clubs
 Prince William Council of Garden Clubs
 District II

My random thoughts

People who garden tend to be kind hearted souls.

Always take the scenic route when possible.

There are too many enjoyable people in this world to spend a lot time with folks you don't get along with.

Friends are family you get to pick!

Never do for free what you're not willing to do for a salary.

If you really want to do something  - make the time to do it now!

Gardeners make great friends...

...and I've made some really fun, smart, inspiring, caring friends when I joined Countryside Garden Club.   Their warm welcome made me feel as though I had known these great people for years.  

Our current president, Jacki is full of energy and laughs at the drop of a hat. I want to grow up and be Miss Pat, the current VP of Projects.  Her devotion to things important to her and her independent nature is very inspiring to me. And there are others... lots of others but if you want to know how special they are you'll have to attend a meeting to find out.  

What we do!!!

From a plant sale at Nokesville Day, to caring for a public library garden and a post office garden, to learning about dragonflies there's a lot of interesting things happening in our club.  A lot of our members attend our meetings regularly (which I gather is a problem for some clubs). We are not foo-foo nor do we get involved in flower shows.  We love visiting each others gardens and doing hands on projects.  

One thing that separates us from some clubs is we don't have mandatory minimum number of meetings to attend.  Nor do you have to take a turn with refreshments or hosting in your home. The other thing that separates our club from most is where are members are from... everywhere in Prince William County as well as a few from other counties too.  We won awards for our newsletters, our community service and yearbooks.

Some typical projects/programs

• Plant Sale - including a shopping trip to a grower to select plants for sale.
• Audobon Society spoke to us about dragonflies
• A member of the Blue Bird Society addressed the decline of eastern bluebirds and what we could do about it.
• Greens workshop - every winter we gather at someone's home to make wreaths, kissing balls, centerpieces etc.
• Garden crafts - from silk wreaths to flower fairies to flower pots to ornaments we have fun crafting as a group with members being the "teachers"
• Creepy Crawlers - we had a former extension agent come and talk to us about snakes, spiders and bats for a "Halloween" meeting.  The things we didn't know amazed us.
• David Roos - perhaps one of the funniest landscape folks ever... talks to us about practical gardening.  
• Seed exhange (not to worry if you don't have any -- we still share ours!)

And much, much more!!!!  Join us for a meeting and decide if we're your kind of club!!!!!

Tea Party

We don't usually do foo-foo but nonetheless I had a ball hosting a club installation tea.  I served lunch but dessert was the most fun.  I made "lace gloved sugar cookies" and chocolate mousse cups with topped with candy hats.  Here's a couple of pictures from that day.


   

Contact Information

I am the current Membership VP so contact me at betty@lakejacksonva.com for more information.