Club News

Club reports are highlighted here when they submit reports for GCI's Garden Glories publication.

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Arlington Heights Garden Club

The Arlington Heights Garden Club is excited for our 2025 programming, which has a focus on sustainability, restoration and supporting native flora and fauna. Our programming partnership with the AH Memorial Library allows us to offer programming that can benefit the community more broadly. Doug Tallemy will be doing a zoom presentation on Biodiversity on January 27th through the library, and Sag Moraine will present Restore the Environment- One Plant at a Time on March 24th. Registration is required for both events through the library website, ahml.info. We are also making a change to our plant sale and will focus on Natives, Vegetables and Herbs, all raised from plugs, seeds or cuttings. This allows us to avoid spreading jumping worms inadvertently as well as fostering education and proliferation of native plants. One of our members will host a propagation clinic in spring to ensure our members are using best practices in growing from seed.

Des Plaines Garden Club

We have had a great start to our 2024-25 year. Our fall Luncheon and Fund Raiser in November is always the highlight of our year. December will find is celebrating the holidays and our friendships . January will find us enjoying a travelog of England with Brock and Ruth Seney. In February our resident tech expert will guide us thru every tab and drop down on our website, and Facebook page so all our members are enjoying every thing DPGC. In March two of our members will give us ideas for gardening as we age. We are proudly 94 years young !

Field and Flower Garden Club of Barrington

Field and Flower Garden Club of Barrington has had an exciting year in 2024! In March we utilized the facilities of the Barrington White House to showcase a slide show of summer garden photos from our members. In April we had a program on “Flower and Vegetable Gardening” by Veronica Porter, followed by an evening in May dedicated to learning “All About Dahlias” from one of our own members, Ifa Phillips. We were each able to bring home several dahlia tubers to grow this summer, many with great success! May was also the month we held a successful plant sale at Freier Farm in Lake Barrington. We even picked up a new member through our plant sale. June was highlighted with a garden walk at members’ homes. I think we particularly enjoyed entering a raffle to guess the number of different species of hosta that one member had in her garden — 92! July was our annual Summer Luncheon, held at a wooded home in Barrington Hills, and August produced another garden walk and a well-received program on “Pruning” by Brad Buker of Bartlett Tree Company. In September we turned our attention towards an excellent presentation of the history and development of the White House Gardens, by Tami Block. Our recent program in October focused on the “Restoration of Grassy Lake Forest Preserve” in Lake County. We are currently anticipating a wonderful “Greens Workshop” in November, to create lovely Christmas and holiday arrangements for our homes. We will close the year off with our annual Christmas Potluck in early December.

Garden Club of Lake Zurich

The Club continues to be encouraged by its membership growth. This year, we added 14 new members. Throughout the past few months, members helped to prepare the community gardens for their winter rest as well as their gardens at home. In November, members attended the annual harvest potluck dinner where we shared recipes/food from our gardens, enjoyed comradery/friendship, and shared past growing season’s challenges and successes. Afterwards, members celebrating special Club anniversaries were honored. As winter weather is now upon us, many members will be busy flipping through their seed catalogs dreaming about the seemingly endless variety of plants, learning about new plant species, and planning their gardens. It’s the anticipation of selecting and ordering seeds that adds to the joy, making it an essential part of the gardening experience. Plus flipping through those colorful pages in the dead of winter brings a bit of springtime hope. Many also stay connected to the gardening communities on social media and get tips and advice. Garden trivia will be a new form of learning this coming year in which members will be encouraged to tap into their natural love for learning while challenging their brains to learn new gardening facts as they engage with others in a bit of competitive spirit but in a light-hearted way. For more information, please follow us on Facebook or visit www.gardencluboflakezurich.org

Garden Club of Mount Prospect

As the growing season ends, our civic beautification projects are winding down. The village gardens that we maintain in Mount Prospect are being put to bed for the winter. These include the butterfly garden in Moehling Park and the gardens on the grounds of the Mount Prospect Historical Society. We enjoyed a thank you brunch given by the Historical Society. The Green Thumb awards, awarded monthly for a beautiful front yard have honored some talented gardeners in Mount Prospect. We are looking forward to winter programs including Winter Sowing, Plant Propagation, and Alternatives to Lawn Grass. Through programs and conservation reports, we are exploring the idea of reducing some of our lawn space in favor of native gardens. The message is “Let your garden go wild.”

Lincolnshire Garden Club

Last fall our Community Beautification Committee decided to leave some of the seed heads and grasses in the Blue Star Memorial Garden for the overwintering birds and bugs. Since a garden is never finished the committee also added several plants to the BSMG as part of our ongoing maintenance. The new plantings included three Kallay Junipers, two ‘Blue Arrow’ columnar Junipers that will grow to twelve feet, and three ‘Danica’ Dwarf Arborvitaes which will offer year-round interest in the garden and protection to wildlife. We hope that you will visit this serene setting when you are nearby.

LGC’s Preorder Spring Plant Sale will be held on May 17, 2025. In January the plants that will be offered will be posted on our website, including some native plants. Online preordering will begin January 20 and continue through 28 February. To order here is a link to our website: https://lincolnshiregardenclub.com/spring-plant-sale

There will be extra plants for sale on the day of pickup so bring a friend. While you are here this would be a great opportunity to view our tranquil and beautiful BSMG.

Our Educational Programs will continue until June and our members are enjoying learning about plants and more through the winter. Join us for a meeting if you can as we would welcome the opportunity to get to know more fellow gardeners and learn about you all.

Northbrook Garden Club

The Northbrook Garden Club members are using the pleasant fall weather to dig and pot up plants for our May 2025 Plant Sale. Several of us have set up areas where we can insulate the pots with leaves or dig in with soil for overwintering. We've had a very good survival rate in past years and appreciate a head start in the spring.

In other fall activities we co-sponsored a community program on Buckthorn Eradication with the Northbrook Public Library and Go Green Northbrook. The whys, hows, and photos of results were enthusiastically received by attendees. Our display, handouts and recommendations on good native replacement shrubs and trees, plus raising awareness about leaving the leaves were great points of discussion. In the same vein, our November program is Soft Landings, about planting native plants and leaving leaves under trees to help native insects.

It is so encouraging to see our membership grow, our interests expand and our dedication to the club and our community blossom!

Northfielders Garden Club

The Northfielders Garden Club is best known for our every three year Daffodil Show, a cherished gift to our Northfield community. A new post pandemic tradition is our new favorite activity, Flowers for Teachers, which is our kick off of the season every September. Our members make and deliver arrangements to the faculty and staff of District 29.

These photos were taken by Jessica Colman Cheng at Flowers for Teachers September 16, 2024.

Park Ridge Garden Club

Our club is having a banner year as we now have over 100 members!

In March we co-hosted the District IX Meeting and Luncheon along with the Northbrook Garden Club.

In May we had our annual plant sale which was a great success thanks to the many volunteers and support of the community.

In June our garden walk was held that has been a tradition for over 30 years.

Another tradition was the Residential Beautification Awards.

We also the the Library Seed Bank Project, a cooperative event sponsored by the club and the Park Ridge Library. We maintained Civic Plantings and provided plants to the seven public and three parochial schools in Park Ridge. Educational materials related to plants and gardening were included.

Town and Country Garden Club of Libertyville

As we wind down 2024 we celebrate the many civic activities the club has supported and our contributions to the Libertyville community. Most notably, our Civic Plantings have moved to fall themes with beautiful dried flower arrangements. They will change again with a winter theme later in the year.

We are excited about the expansion of our Civic Projects and donations to the community. We expanded our school library donation program to add John Lewis Middle School in Waukegan and Evelyn Alexander Elementary in North Chicago. We also supported the Holy Family Community Garden in Waukegan, a part of the Roberti Community House program with a donation to support the purchase of steel raised garden beds. During the summer a gardening focused drop off program for children is offered providing the children with the opportunity to learn and work in a community garden. Finally, but not lastly, we supported the National Garden Club Path of Success with a paver purchase. Can hardly wait to see the path when it is finished!

We will end the year with a unique club program – Tabletops and Tablescapes! Our speaker will complement our interest in floral and landscape design by demonstrating how to create a tablescape that uses china, glassware and floral arrangements to make an event special.

Wauconda Garden Club

The Wauconda Garden Club has been very busy with several new as well as ongoing projects:

1 - We purchased and donated a tree to the Wauconda Elementary School #225 to celebrate their 100th year anniversary.

2 - We donated and planted several annuals at the Kuester Manor residence along with putting in a zinnia garden and donating garden tools for the residence.

3 - The Blue Star Memorial garden which is downtown and dedicated to those who served in the US Armed Forces, was completely redone.

4 - A landscape update was designed and planted in front and along the side of the Wauconda Township office.

5 - We continued our work at Alta Rehab (formerly Wauconda Care), every other month engaging the residents in crafts and various activities.

6 - A pollinator garden was installed and is maintained along Wauconda’s Main Street.

7 - Pumpkins were carved and filled with plantings and then distributed to various businesses within Wauconda as a thank you for their support.