May 2011

The wonderful month of May is here in its full glory. Spring this year has been one of the most colorful and the iris have been putting on a fantastic show. The storms and flooding have been some of the worst we have dealt with in many years. Each season has its good things and things we could do without.

Even though we struggled through April’s cold and wet weather that made us cancel several potting sessions for our Spring Plant Sale, we had wonderful weather the day of the sale. For the past few years we have had to deal with rain, wind and cold temperatures on our sale days. It was so refreshing to see customers lined up around the Tanyard Pavilion just waiting for our sale to start. And they just kept coming and were eager to buy. What a wonderful day! I am so thankful for all of our dedicated members who worked so hard to make this sale such a great success.

Now we can enjoy our Field Trip on May 25th to the Learning Fields at Cha ffee Crossing. We have filled the bus and there is a waiting list if some members have to cancel at the last minute. Janice Kennedy planned another wonderful day for us to share our love of nature.

Our Garden Walk this year will be one of the biggest and best ever. Not only will we have 6 beautiful gardens to view and 2 nurseries to visit, there will be Plein Air Artists painting in a garden; Bill Towle, Landscape Architect; Dr. Sealy from the U of A; Brenda Embry, the Butterfly Lady; and Master Gardeners available to entertain and enlighten our guests. Please be sure to get tickets from Beth Kastl to sell to friends and neighbors. We have set the bar for ticket sales pretty high for this fundraiser but with everyone working together we can hit that target.

Also in June we will have our Luncheon at Shewmaker Center for Global Business on the Northwest Arkansas Community College campus where we will enjoy a cooking demonstration of our delicious lunch. Be sure to get your reservations in for this event and I am hoping the each and every one of our members will be able to attend. We will also be installing our new officers for 2011-2012.

That brings me to the point where I have to tell you that it is hard to describe my feelings as I bring my final message to you as your President. The past two years have been so rewarding and heartwarming for me. You have embraced our projects and have made me so proud our all of our efforts to beautify our community, share our gardening information and leave our world better than we found it. I thank you for the wonderful memories I will carry with me always.

Hoping to see you all at the June 1st Luncheon as we wrap up our garden club year.

Geri Hoerner

April 2011

A beautiful spring makes us forget the horrendous winter weather we had in February. The bulbs put on a grand show, the lilacs are filling the air with their perfume, the red buds add so much color to our woods and the dogwoods are beginning to pop. The first hummingbird to visit our feeders arrived on April 7th this year. What a wonderful season this is!

The Bella Vista Memorial Garden Cemetery garden surrounding the new information building has been refurbished and replanted to be ready for our Arbor Day celebration on Friday, April 15th. We will be planting two Oklahoma Red Bud trees there at 11:00 that day and I am hoping we will have a good turn out of members to help celebrate the event.

The Blue Star Memorial Garden at the Highway 71 Visitor’s Center has been tidied up for the season and is ready for the many visitors that come through Bella Vista. The Veterans’ Wall of Honor will be planted with annuals this month so the beds will be full and pretty for the Memorial Day ceremonies.

Our Gardening Seminar has a new Chairman. Missy Stratton is working on the final details of the seminar on Saturday, April 30th and is thankful for the members who have volunteered to help.

Missy will also be busy with Kate Pilarski, as they have taken over publicity for our club. Ronnie Clark has had to step down due to family obligations and we thank her for her past efforts. If you have any pictures or articles to be publicized, please contact either Kate or Missy to get the word out about our club activities.

Spring is also the time when we begin working at full speed on our Spring Plant Sale and Garden Walk to raise funds for our scholarships and community projects.

We have had several digging and potting sessions and the inventory of our plants in the sand beds at Village Wastewater has been taken. We are off to a good start but we will need many more plants to make it a profitable sale. If you have plants to share from your garden and cannot dig and pot them yourself, please let me know. The pre sale days at Village Wastewater are April 23rd and April 30th . These sale days are when we sell plants that we have an over abundant supply of and feel we can’t sell all of them at our main sale on May 7th.

There are nine Bella Vista Garden Club members going to the AFGC State Convention in Fort Smith this week and we are confident that we will be bringing home many State and Regional Awards to share with you at our April Meeting. That is just another reason to be at our last regular meeting of the year in addition to the great “Shade Gardening” program to be presented by Joyce Mendenhall. We will also have tickets for the Garden Walk available and garden plaques you can purchase for your garden. It will be a great meeting you won’t want to miss and I am looking forward to seeing you there.

Geri Hoerner

March 2011

It seems we left for Texas just at the right time. Missed the horrific February snow and cold weather up here although it was cold the first week in Texas. They set some record lows and we had to leave our faucets and showers dripping overnight to keep the pipes from freezing. There were quite a few dead palm trees as a result of the week long below freezing temperatures. We were lucky to have the blanket of snow on our gardens here during the coldest nights. I am seeing some winter kill on some plants but things are starting to pop out of the ground and the bulbs are starting to flower. Spring isn’t too far away but I would keep that snow shovel handy since the Farmers’ Almanac has forecasted snow in late March!

Our spring projects are starting to take shape and the Bella Vista TV program for March features our fellow member, Lisa Pittman, owner of From the Ground Up Nursery. She has some exciting new plants available at her nursery this year, so be sure to check them out. If you cannot view our TV program on Cox Channel 222, the station has agreed to donate DVDs of our programs to the Bella Vista Library. So far they have sent DVDs for the months of March 2010 through February 2011 and they are currently being cataloged. Soon you will be able to charge them out and view them on your DVD player at home. Future program DVDs will be sent to the Library as the programs are taped and copied.

There were a number of BVGC members at the Janet Carson program held at Embassy Suites last week. It was nice that the Friends of the Rogers Library brought her here to speak at no charge. She is always interesting and had new and interesting plants to recommend. We were lucky enough to get a plug in for our plant sale and the Garden Club of Rogers plant sale when some audience members asked where they could find plants that we normally sell.

The deadline to register for the AFGC State Convention on April 11 – 13 without a late fee has been extended to March 28th so you can still register and the BVGC will reimburse you for the Registration Fee and Awards Luncheon costs of $46.50. The meeting is in Ft. Smith this year, which is so much closer than Little Rock. Room reservations have been made to accommodate a few more members so if you decide to join us, please let me know. Some members are attending Monday thru Wednesday and some are going down Tuesday and returning Wednesday. Please refer to your Arkansas Gardener magazine for the Registration Form. This is a great opportunity to meet other garden club members from across the state.

Our Arbor Day planting date has been set for Friday, April 15th at 11:00 AM if you want to mark your calendar. We will be planting two Oklahoma Red Bud trees at the Bella Vista Memorial Garden Cemetery and would love to have a good turn out of members for a photo op.

Our Gardening Seminar is set for Saturday, April 30th, from 9:00 AM to noon and the location will be the Bella Vista Community Church – Lower Level. Speakers and subjects have been confirmed and the flyer will be available at our March meeting. We are still in need of a Chairman to pull the last details together.

We are also without a Digging and Potting Chairman for our Spring Plant Sale on Saturday, May 7th, which means we will all have to pull together to get gardens dug and plants potted. If you have plants to share from your garden and cannot dig and pot them yourself, please let me know or sign up at our March meeting so we can get a crew to help. If you can dig and pot your plants, remember there are one gallon pots available Monday thru Saturday at Village Wastewater and we will have potting materials and markers there later in March. I want to thank Janice Kennedy for taking the reins for me at the February Meeting and doing such a good job. Heard very good reports that the meeting and food were great! Hope to see you all at our March Meeting and I will have some advance information on our awards results prior to the AFGC State Convention in April. Also, you will not want to miss Dawn Denton’s landscape program “Inside Out”.

Geri Hoerner

February 2011

I am hoping this message finds you warm and safe from this horrible winter weather that many of us wanted to get away from by moving to the Bella Vista area. While we have been in Conroe, Texas, this month, the weather here has been more like a Bella Vista winter except the freezing temperatures have been setting records here like most parts of the country. We have been told to let our faucets drip at night since these buildings were not designed to withstand such cold temperatures for such long periods of time. The palm trees are suffering along with other more sensitive plants. Hopefully this artic blast will be over soon and we can get back to normal. Please check the home page of our website for our inclement weather policy, but hopefully the weather will be pleasant by our February Meeting.

While I am gone this month Janice Kennedy will be presiding at the February meeting on the 23rd. Don’t forget that this is the “Have a Heart” month where we collect items for the Children’s Shelter. Check the article on the next page (of the newsletter) for the items needed by the shelter on an ongoing basis.

Also please note in your yearbook that the Programs and Horticulture for February and April will be switched. This month Tony LiCausi will present his “Gardening the Natural Way” method to prepare the soil and Diane Cobb will show you how to “Get Rid of Pesky Pests the Earth-Friendly Way”. The Perennial Plant Trade Day will still be held in April.

While you have your yearbook open you can add the location for of the Gardening Seminar on April 30th as the Bella Vista Community Church, Lower Level. As soon as we have a chairman for this project we will finish coordinating the speakers and workers needed. Some preliminary work has been done but a few more items need to be completed.

February is also the month for the State Flower Show in Little Rock. If you think you have any horticulture that could be dug out of the snow to be taken to the state show or houseplants that can be entered on February 24th, please call Linda Neymeyer to coordinate your entry. She has the schedule listing all of the categories of horticulture that can be entered and their class numbers. I know they are very concerned about the amount of horticulture entries they will have due to the bad weather all across Arkansas this year. Check out the article in the newsletter for more information.

The Friends of the Rogers Public Library are bringing Janet Carson to the Embassy Suites to speak on March 8th, 2011 at 7 p.m. Mark your calendars for this free event. This is a great opportunity to hear a very knowledgeable speaker that is like talking to a walking gardening encyclopedia. For those of you who do not know Janet, she is the Extension Horticulture Specialist in Little Rock that heads up the Arkansas Master Gardener Program for the U of A. She has a weekly gardening question and answer column in the Daily Record and produces a weekly television program shown in central Arkansas. A flyer with more information will be available at our February meeting and has been posted on our website.

So as we thaw out from the winter storms, I hope you are able to attend the February Meeting and you never know if and when Ima Lulu will show up!

Geri Hoerner

January 2011

Well 2011 is here and as we start our new year I am hoping I can keep a resolution or two! The saying “out with the old and in with the new” could be a mantra I can use to clear out things that are no longer needed and try new things I hadn’t thought of before.

In a way I have been doing that with our website that is going to be judged soon for a National Garden Clubs, Inc. award. With the help of Cathy Wayson and Denise Williamsen we are reviewing the site to be sure it is up to date and relevant. Sue Jacobson will be assisting with her laptop in Austin, Texas, with the tasks that only she can do so well. If you do find something on our site that you think can be improved at any time, please let either Sue or Cathy know so it can be reviewed. I received an email from the site this past week from a woman in Colorado Springs who is contemplating a move to Bella Vista in the future. She loved the site and all the information it contained but she still wanted to talk with someone in the club about gardening here since she heard it was “rocky”. After we talked about half an hour on the phone, she felt confident that she could garden here and expects to move to Bella Vista in about 18 months and plans to join the club. It is exciting to know that people all over the world can view our website and learn about our club and its activities.

Getting rid of old things that are no longer needed can also help the club. As I mentioned at the last meeting and in the last newsletter, turning in empty printer ink cartridges at club meetings can help with office supplies that are needed. This month I was able to purchase two printer cartridges for only a few dollars after our credit was applied. We can turn in up to 20 cartridges a month so please remember to recycle!

January is our Dorothy Wallace Scholarship presentation month. Being able to help horticulture students with their college expenses is something near and dear to my heart as most of you know. I am sure it goes back to when I graduated from high school and I could not afford to go to college. Working full time and going to college at night was my only option, which left no time for life!!

Don’t forget our Board Meeting will be held at 9:30 before the regular meeting on January 26th. All members are welcome to attend our Board Meetings; you don’t have to be an officer or Committee Chairman. I look forward to seeing you all at our January meetings.

Geri Hoerner

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Greetings!!!

Since we do not have a newsletter for December, I wanted to keep you informed of the activities going on this past month.

Our Christmas Luncheons always get us started on the right foot for the holiday season. Becky Fox worked her magic again and with the help of Janet Crosman provided us with a lovely lunch with their special touches. At each place setting a chocolate mug with a spoon in the handle and imprinted with Bella Vista Garden Club added that extra special something we could take home and enjoy. The beautiful decorations at the River Grill were enhanced by the decorated, lighted glass blocks on each table that were attendance prizes. Beth Kastl designed a darling Christmas tree for the raffle that was won by Elsie Taylor. A fairly new singing group called “Persnickety” delighted us with holiday songs in perfect harmony. Cathy Wayson has posted pictures on our website for you to enjoy. It was a great day spent with great friends.

Some of our members who are Master Gardeners attended the year-end party and Lou Jasper was named “Benton County Master Gardener of the Year” for 2010. Congratulations to Lou – you are certainly deserving of this award!! She has worked very hard on their Growing Up Green Program, which involves children in gardening activities. One special project was at the Sunshine School, which is near and dear to her heart, where the children planted flowers and vegetables and then were so excited when they got to eat the vegetable they grew!!

A three-shelf bookcase has been purchased and placed in the Bella Vista Museum to hold our historic records. It has been an ongoing problem storing our records on a small section of shelves but now we have more room to hold our minutes, yearbooks, history books and awards. I have organized our minutes and financial reports and put them in labeled binders that are mostly complete back to 1972 when we were first Federated. There are some minutes missing from June 1998 to December 1999 so if you have any old records from this time period please let me know. The Museum is closed for the winter and will reopen in March and I hope you can find some time after that to visit and look through our historic records.

We are also being given some storage space at the Village Wastewater Company that can be used to store our signs, banners and plant sale supplies. A storage shed has been expanded and we will have some shelves and a large bin for our use. Although the shed is not heated or cooled, it can hold some of the items our members have been storing in their garages. Needles to say my hubby is tickled to death that we could get some signs out of our garage!!

The Bella Vista Community Television Station is going digital in December. This means that Channel 16 on Cox is changing to Channel 222 and the Bella Vista Gardening TV show is going to expand the broadcast area from Bella Vista to all of Northwest Arkansas. The Cox Channel 16 will still be available until January 24, 2011 but if you do not have the digital box, you will not be able to view the program after that date as it will show only on Channel 222. We will be taping the January show with a new set so be sure to catch the show on Wednesday evenings at 7:30 or Saturday morning at 8:00.

My very best wishes to each and every one of you for a Blessed Christmas and a Happy, Healthy New Year!

Geri Hoerner

November 2010

Mother Nature never ceases to amaze me! I never thought our fall color would be so beautiful with the heat and drought we suffered this year but she surprised us again. Some of the maples look like they would glow in the dark. Our woods have come alive with color and I am so glad because fall is one of my favorite seasons.

Speaking of surprises… If you were not at the October meeting you missed the “Surprise World Famous Floral Designer” who was our own Janice Kennedy in the role of Ima Lulu from a little town outside of Toad Suck, Arkansas. I didn’t even know there was a small town outside of Toad Suck. We all learned a lot from Ima and I have never seen a Wal-Mart bouquet look so good and be so versatile. She kept us all in stitches and I hope Ima Lulu comes back to visit us again.

This is also the season for our Scholarship Benefit Card Party. They get better and better so that is why tickets sell out earlier and earlier every year. We are so fortunate to have such hard working, generous and talented members that made this card party such a huge success. More details, photos and some quotes from the attendees will be posted on our Card Party page.

It is so important for our members to visit our website often because it is being updated on an ongoing basis. Our NEWS page has two new postings that offer opportunities to get plants so please check out the NEWS page whenever you sign on to the web. This is such a great way to keep our members up do date.

As we begin the Holiday Season and begin making plans for Thanksgiving, please take time to be thankful for every day we share with our garden club family. We have been so blessed to have found this wonderful, caring community. Our Christmas Luncheon on December 1st will begin the Christmas Season and I hope you will be able to join us for the festivities.

Geri Hoerner

October 2010

Our year is starting out very well and since our new Yearbooks were printed in September we have added ten new members. We also have made some Committee Chairmen changes. Information on our new members and a list of revised Committee Chairmen are printed in the newsletter so you can add them to your Yearbook.

The second Gardening Seminar we held on September 25th was very successful with 100% positive feedback again. It looks like we will have another one in the spring and may have to have a larger venue.

Fall may not be as spectacular as in years past. Our excessive heat and drought will no doubt have an adverse affect on our fall color. There are a few trees here and there that are showing some great color but there are so many trees that have just turned brown or dropped a lot of leaves trying to survive. We just returned from a trip to Heber Springs, Arkansas, on Greer’s Ferry Lake and the color there was similar to what we have here.

With fall comes our Fall Bulb and Plant Sale and we did have a good sale this year with almost $400 to fund our projects. The weather was beautiful but the customer count was down from previous years. We had pulled several thousand (yes I said thousand) Iris pallida from the Bella Vista Lake Trail. These are a fragrant light purple bearded iris that has a grape scent. Some of these irises that we did not sell we will pot for the spring sale and we are looking for some organizations that would like to have some of these beautiful irises for planting. Pictures of this digging project and our fall sale will be posted on our website shortly.