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The next Perennial Plant Club Board of Directors meeting will be held on Wednesday, September 17th , at the home of Norma Clevenger. Our October board meeting will be at the home of Barbara Lane, though the date hasn’t been set yet.. As always, meetings are open to all members. These meetings are a great chance to see how the club is run and where you might like to help. We also get a chance to tour the wonderful gardens of our members before dinner. Friends, gardens, food, and club business. Can’t beat that! Meetings are Potluck dinner meetings - informative and delicious. Please call Jeannie Ross @ 985-4262 if you would like to attend. We would love your input.

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FROM OUR PRESIDENT

September. Relief in sight from hot weather? I vote yes! (No recall of Summer though)

Our Folsom garden weathered the heat well. My only disappointment is how very quickly the lavender flowers ripened and lost color this summer. The banana loves the heat, and we expect to see it’s top towering over the deck soon.

The Board of Directors held up in the heat. Our July meeting was at the home of Peggy Weseloh. We accomplish quite a bit. Most importantly is the formation of a new Program Committee. Janice Sutherland, Peggy Weseloh, and Jeannie Christopherson have agreed to this task with Janice acting as Chairman. If you have any ideas or requests, Janice would like hearing from you.

The other important topic for the July and August Board meetings has been an on-going discussion of where we will hold our general meetings and yearly vendor sale in the coming years. We have been very unhappy with the fact that we cannot hold our vendor sale at the Garden & Arts Center. As members of the Center we are entitled to hold an exhibit/sale at no cost to the club. Over the years the only time available to us have been when our vendors either can’t or would rather not participate. With out the vendors there isn’t much point to having the sale, and after the response we have had at each of the last sales, we know we want to have it. Apparently the availability of the Center is not going to change, so…..

We have been looking at possibilities. After a two year study with 6 places in consideration so far that meet our financial, physical and emotional needs, we have narrowed the search down to two locations. The Garden and Arts Center, and the KVIE public television campus. We aren’t ruling any thing our just yet, and are still searching for the ‘perfect’ place.

As a Board, we worry about how moving from the center will affect our membership. We also worry that the Center fees are increasing by $200.00 per sale and there is no chance for our own sale. Sigh! It’s a very difficult decision, and one we will concentrate on at the next Bard meeting at Norma’s. If you have strong feeling one way or the other I will take them to the next Board meeting. E-mail me at jrldandc@att.net or phone at 985-4262.

Speaking of the Garden & Arts Center, this years annual fall sale will be held on Saturday, October 4th and Sunday October 5th, 2003. Ours of the sale will be 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days. Set up will be on Fri. the 3rd from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
This year the Center has decided to access each participating club $200.00 for the fall sale.

Clubs must pay the 200.00 assessment, but are not required to be at the sale. If the club participates in the sale all moneys collected will go to that club.

At this time the perennial plant club is planning on participating in the sale, so if you have plants to donate we will appreciate them. Let me know if you need help getting them to the center on October 3rd. and we will see what we can do.
Usually our plants sell really well, so I guess there is a chance our tables could be money makers for the P.P.C.

Jeannie Ross

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Meet Our Scholarship Winners
by Peggy Kennedy

Debbie Bradley Wins PPC Scholarship at American River College

As a young girl, Debbie Bradley, with her dog at her side, walked the undeveloped fields of Loomis, admiring the flowers and bringing selected specimens (she didn’t know better) home to her mother. At home, her father had a one-half acre vegetable garden. Now after years selling real estate, Bradley is going to school to learn enough about horticulture to find employment that will get her back in the garden.

Bradley’s goal at mid-life is to create and foster awareness of horticulture beauty. She hopes to plan gardens, both public and private. and get people out to enjoy them.

Bradley also wants to teach good gardening practices that will ensure a healthy environment. Among the gardening practices she champions are composting, using water wisely, mulching, avoiding using pesticides and other chemicals, and selecting plants that enjoy our Mediterranean climate. By using these practices and teaching them to others, she hopes to improve the chances of a healthy environment surviving so that future generations will be able to enjoy gardens.

She already has some experience in building and maintaining public gardens. For the past semester Bradley has volunteered to plant and maintain the gardens at the Sacramento Zoo. Next year she hopes to volunteer for another gardening project for another organization to get experience with another kind of garden.

After one more year studying horticulture at American River College, Bradley will enter the work place. Later, after she has some practical experience in the field, she’d like to continue her education part-time.

The Perennial Plant club applauds her and is pleased to offer our support in the form of the annual scholarship

Paul Davis Wins PPC Scholarship at Sierra College

Nowadays, Paul Davis looks forward to spending his working hours outdoors planning gardens. After he completes the summer session at Sierra College, he’ll begin his landscape design studies at U. C. Davis in the fall term. In two or so years, he’ll be ready to enter the profession of landscape design full-time!

To prepare to transfer, he’s taken all required horticulture classes at Sierra College. In that process, he learned he’s drawn to landscape design, probably because he’s always liked art. His mother is a graphic designer, and his father is an engineer, so art may be in his blood, and landscape design may be the best way for him to combine the artistic and the practical.

At any rate, Davis now knows he wants to build gardens. He has helped several friends and friends of friends landscape their gardens - three in the last three months. He’s been landscaping his own backyard since he and his wife moved into the home about five years ago and found landscaping to be as much fun as work. The payoff of garden design, for Davis, is that he can bring natural beauty to those who visit the gardens he plans.

Happily, he will leave behind his occupation of ten years of selling wireless service and products. Both his wife and his parents support his decision to make this major change in occupation.

The Perennial Plant Club wishes Davis all the best in his efforts to become a landscape designer. We are happy to support him with a $1,000 scholarship for further study.

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I’ve been pondering for a long time how to landscape my blah front yard, considering over the years cottage gardens, tropical beds, woodland gardens, etc. and have finally decided on a Japanese style garden. I guess the old saying that as gardeners mature, their love of green increases has held true, I can remember thinking oriental garden style as boring and dull when I was a beginning gardener, but now the quiet serenity of green plants, rocks and water hold much more appeal. Life has grown increasingly hectic over the years, and the thought of sitting, listening to the wind blow through rustling bamboo leaves and the tinkling of a waterfall, while watching fish laze about at the bottom of a pond seems heavenly. We are blessed in this area to be in driving range of several public Japanese gardens. Most people know about Strybing park’s Japanese garden, but there are public gardens in the cities of San Jose, Oakland, Hayward , San Mateo and Los Gatos. I have visited all these this summer, seeking ideas and learning what features make a garden “Japanese”. McAllister Water Gardens in Youtsville has been an inspiration as well. I am now happily contemplating a pond, shopping for the best source of boulders, and researching bamboo, oriental fence design, and pruning techniques. There is an superb web site that is extremely helpful for anyone thinking of installing a Japanese garden, http://www.jgarden.org There is also an excellent magazine devoted to the development and maintenance of Japanese gardens, The Japanese Garden Journal, which can be reviewed and ordered through this website http://www.rothteien.com As usual, I have decided on a style that is not at it’s best in a hot climate, Japan’s climate is more similar to the Pacific Northwest than the hot Central Valley, but I shall see what can be done, and will have fun trying. The club has visited a few local oriental style gardens in the recent past, so I know it’s not impossible!

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Always harvest early in the day when the flavor is the best, and of course, the more you pick the more fruit the plant will continue to produce.

At the end of the tomato harvest 1) remove all flower clusters and small immature tomatoes, forcing the vine into putting its energy into ripening the remaining fruit. Or 2) withhold water, which makes the stressed plant attempt to ripen all its fruits. Often this produces a more delicious, intense tomato flavor.

When the weather begins to cool its time to get busy. It’s time to plant daffodils, (plant some every 2 or 3 weeks for prolonged blooming) anemone, ranunculus, hyacinths, freesias, tulips, Iceland poppies and chrysanthemums in the flowerbeds. Don’t forget to plant sweet peas too. Have you ever planted a few sweet peas and let them run amuck in your perennial beds? They can add sparkle where they peek through here and there. Possibly you may want to plant spinach, radishes, lettuce, strawberry, carrots, garlic, onions, broccoli, cabbage or swiss chard in the vegetable plots.

Cool fall days are ideal for planting trees, shrubs and ground covers. They will gain almost a full years growth over those planted next spring. The soil is warm so the roots spread and become established.

It’s a great time to renovate and aerate lawns. There is no better time to divide and replant crowded clumps of perennials. And the spots where you plant daffodil bulbs will look great immediately when you plant pansies or violas over the top.

Fall cleanup is an important part of disease and pest control. Yank out any infected plants and rake up their leaves and dispose of them in the trash.

It will soon be time to rinse gardening tools with a solution of one part bleach to three parts water. Then coat the tools lightly with oil to keep them from rusting during the winter.