Welcome

We'll welcome back Sherry Chaisson for a very informative presentation on how to properly clean, oil, sharpen and store gardening tools and pruners.Sherry is a Senior Instructor in the Plant, Food and Environmental Science Faculty at Dalhousie Agricultural Campus in Truro.

Join us in person for a watch party and end of season social! The Tattooed Gardener, will present to us virtually from Ontario (topic to be announced). With over 30 years in the Horticulture Industry, The Tattooed Gardener is currently the Vice-President for the Etobicoke Horticultural Society, and has experience as the Director of Horticulture at the Toronto Botanical Garden, and Curatorial Gardener at the Toronto Zoo. And bring a couple of plants and go home with a couple of new plants through our plant exchange!

We'll welcome back Llyod Mapplebeck to talk about gardening trends that are both general and specific to our area, and include dealing with deer; planting for sun following Hurricane Fiona's destruction; interest in gardening for pollinators and with native plants; increasing interest in organic and food gardening; online purchasing; how garden centres and nurseries may be changing how they operate; and the increase in conjecture and mis-information.

Paul Manning, assistant professor in Dalhousie's department of plant, food and environmental sciences, will talk to us about dealing with Japanese Beetles. The invasive pest has been increasing in number and spreading throughout the province, and sadly is here to stay.

The February meeting will be offered virtually only. February often has bad weather and the ability to watch from home will be a cosy option!

We'll welcome speaker Lynn Brooks who’ll talk about using perennial plants to create plant communities that provide a home for nature. Lynn will explain what a "designed" plant community is, and will introduce us to plant selections for a resilient landscape. This is a change in how you view your garden - not just as a collection of plants but as a community of plants that support each other. Lynn considers herself an aging gardener, and says these gardens require less weeding and are better for the environment, but still look like there is a person in charge!

We will get in the mood for the coming holiday season with our Christmas Social! We'll socialize over festive snacks, hold a Yankee Gift Swap, a seed exchange, and give out our Christmas member gift of Muscari bulbs.

We'll learn about Preserving the Harvest. Want to save your garden harvest and save money on groceries this year? Our guest speaker will go over the many ways to "put up" veggies for winter, including canning, dehydrating, freezing, and natural cold storage. Elizabeth Peirce is the author of several books on vegetable gardening and preserving, including Grow Organic: A Simple Guide to NS Vegetable Gardening (winner of the APMA Best Atlantic Published Book) and You Can Too! (a guide to preserving).

We're connecting with our gardening community to share our stories and love of gardening. What a gardening season we had this summer with drought, wildfires, evacuations, heavy rainfalls with washouts and most recently tropical cyclones. Gardens were impacted for sure, however, the damage/loss of homes, emotional stress and shock to family and friends all played a toll. But we are a community of gardeners with years of optimism and resourcefulness to see the potential of turning small seeds, plants into vivid floral/produce dreams. We are resilient and strong when we are together!

We'll present the slideshow that was scheduled for our May meeting - members will show what they were up to in the garden this year. Come and catch up, party....there will be food! Let's be together again!

Cancelled due to Tantallon Wildfire.

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club will host a slide show of what members have been up to in their gardens. Get inspiration for gardening projects or favorite garden spots!

Masks are required.

On Monday, April 24 (7:00 - 9:00 pm), the Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club will welcome one of our members, Margan Dawson, to tell us about Healing Plants in Your Garden. As an herbalist with an aim to provide community education on herbs for health and well-being, Margan will share ideas on how we can include healing plants in our day-to-day lives. From her two gardens (one in Hammonds Plains and one in Mahone Bay) Margan grows herbs used in the preparation of herbal remedies, and loves to share her passion and inspiration with others.

Masks are required.

Steve Farley, creator of "The Optimistic Gardener" YouTube channel on vegetable and flower gardening, will share his observations on the physical and mental benefits of gardening and how he believes gardening saved his life.

Steve will also answer questions about his "The Optimistic Gardener" Youtube channel, his experience with his greenhouse build where he encountered permit difficulties, and learning to garden in a different climate after moving to Nova Scotia from London, England.

Masks are required.

Jenni Blackmore, certified permaculture designer, and author of Permaculture for the Rest of Us, and The Food Lover’s Garden, will introduce us to the principles of Permaculture and tell us about her efforts here, on an island off the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. Starting out as a single mom with a very limited budget Jenni was forced to use what was free and readily available to transform a barren acre into a fertile homestead, the now remarkably-fertile garden beds of QuackaDoodle Farm.

We’ll also hold a general gardening Q&A session after our speaker. We’ll see what advice other members can offer 😊

Masks are required.

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club will welcome the speaker originally planned for November. Jaimee Morozoff, Nova Scotia Program Director with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, is a biologist with an expertise in pollinators and a passion for gardening. She will discuss how to make your garden more pollinator friendly, and explore native plant options to increase biodiversity in your yard. She will share her own successes including Monarchs (and flops) with native plants and pollinators in Nova Scotia and provide some key considerations for making a garden benefit both the garden and the gardener. Jamie will also share her amazing documentation of Monarch Butterflies in her garden (she had about 80 Monarch caterpillars this year!)

We will also hold a seed swap.

Elsa Phil shared a presentation on the seeds in this year's seed order.

Masks are required.

Club members share gardening tips and tricks, including self sufficiency ideas such as solar power and water conservation, and commiserate over Hurricane Fiona impacts to gardens and yards.

Masks are required.

HPAGC is pleased to welcome Charlie Baird, known locally as Charlie the Tree Guy. Charlie has a large collection of trees and flowering shrubs for sale at great prices. He shares advice for choosing the proper tree for the conditions it will be growing in. Pruning and feeding instructions are provided as well. He will discuss his new venture, growing trees with healthier roots by using grow bags instead of pots. We are late to celebrate National Tree Day - Sept 21,2022, however the time is still ideal for planting! Join us to learn more about this aspect of gardening!

Masks are required.

This meeting was cancelled by Hurricane Fiona.

Masks are required.

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club is holding our annual Plant Sale at the Bedford Hammonds Plains Community Centre, at 202 Innovation Drive, in the former Preschool Room, located just to the right of the entrance doors on the main floor. Great prices on shrubs, perennials and vegetable and flower transplants grown by members.

Masks are required.

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club will welcome Dave Belt of Seafoam Lavender Company and Gardens. Located on the pastoral shores of Nova Scotia’s Northumberland Strait, on a lush escarpment overlooking Prince Edward Island, lie the beautiful rows of lavender at Seafoam Lavender Gardens. They are a small, family-owned and operated agricultural business, producing direct-from-the-farm lavender products, and they encourage visitors to wander through their lavender gardens. Dave will talk to us about growing lavender and using it in making products.

We will also hold our annual plant exchange. Members that bring in 2 plants can exchange them for 2 new plants! This will be our last meeting before the summer break. Our new meeting season will begin in September.

Concerned about your health and the health of pollinators and wildlife in your garden? The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club is looking forward to hearing guest speaker Lloyd Mapplebeck of Hillendale Perennials teach us about alternatives to chemicals in the garden.

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club will host a talk on Rain Gardens by Sandra Matchett, President of the Atlantic Master Gardeners Association. Sandra has rain gardens on her property and will tell us about establishing rain gardens, including their benefits, how they work, and plants that do well in those conditions.

Monday, February 28, 7:00 pm, the Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club will host a talk on house plants! Audrey from Audrey’s Little Shop of Plants (102 Portland St., Dartmouth) will talk about how to pick a plant that suits a particular environment and lifestyle, and how to take care of the plant once at home, including how to know when to water, transplant and fertilize. She’ll answer our house plant questions too!

Our meeting is again virtual, so you can enjoy the photos and information, and ask questions from the comfort of your own home. And we encourage you to show us your houseplant if it helps with your question or comment (a benefit of meeting virtually from home 😀).

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club will host "Successful Vegetable Gardening" with guest speaker, Julia Dimakos, aka the Gardening Girl. You may remember that Julia led an interesting virtual talk on properly storing our produce in March 2021.

Julia will take us through the development of her own 7000 square foot, raised-bed kitchen garden on her rural property in Mono, Ontario (climate Zone 5A/B). She will tell us about grading the site, installing a deer fence, and building raised beds. She will also cover fertilizing, proper watering techniques, transplanting tips, sowing and planting techniques, hardening off, trellising, crop rotation and more. These are the steps that she follows in her own vegetable garden and finds success with, year after year.

Our meeting is again virtual, so you can enjoy the photos and information, and ask questions from the comfort of your own home!

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club is kicking off our meeting season with an in-person, outside meeting on Sunday, September 26, at 10:00 am. We’ll visit a local community garden - the William E. Frank Live More Park located on the front lawn of Northwood's Ivany Place at 123 Gary Martin Drive in Bedford. Our October meeting is a fall garden tour. The nature of meetings after that will depend on Covid-19.

We’ll hold our meeting first, then tour the Community Garden, which provides opportunities to discuss growing vegetables and ornamental plants. We encourage you to share your gardening successes and challenges this year. We can learn a lot from each other!

We ask that you bring the following to the September meeting in respect of Covid precautions:

• mask (required by Ivany Place to enter the park)
• lawn chair
• your own beverage and snack
• Also, dress appropriately! We’ll be outside for about 1.5 hours. It’s a windy spot and there is very little shade.

The September meeting is the only meeting open to non-members, and is free.

We plan to hold a meeting in some form every month from September through to May, except for December. We have some exciting ideas for our program this year, including more virtual meetings (most with guest speakers). We’re also hoping to offer a seed order, seed exchange and plant sale this year.

We welcome new members any time. Join the Club and enjoy our programming until May. We are reachable through our Facebook group or by email at contact@hpagc.ca.

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club will host a virtual tour of this local, sustainable, natural, practical garden. Megan and Joe have begun to transform their wooded lot into a food-forest backyard full of biodiversity, leaving and creating natural habitats for insects, birds, and other animals to foster a balanced micro-ecosystem. They have developed many features in their home and garden that are inspirational. For this meeting, we will focus on their in-ground greenhouse (Walipini) which extends the growing season and pushes the limits of what they can grow, and the hugelkultur methods they have applied in building their garden beds to make use of natural, organic materials. Inspirational! You can check them out on Facebook at "Sound Living NS".

A link to the virtual meeting will be sent to members only.

We welcome new members any time. Join the Club and enjoy our programming until May. We are reachable through our Facebook group or by email at contact@hpagc.ca.

Our members will share photos and stories of their efforts and experiences gardening during the pandemic.

A link to the virtual meeting will be sent to members only.

We welcome new members any time. Join the Club and enjoy our programming until May. We are reachable through our Facebook group or by email at contact@hpagc.ca.

Tips for storing and preserving the harvest from our gardens. More info coming soon.

A link to the virtual meeting will be sent to members only.

We welcome new members any time. Join the Club and enjoy our programming until May. We are reachable through our Facebook group or by email at contact@hpagc.ca.

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club welcomes best-selling author Niki Jabbour, who has just released her 4th book, Growing Under Cover: Techniques for a More Productive, Weather-Resistant, Pest-Free Vegetable Garden, will review a variety of large and small covers that can be used to extend the growing season and reduce pest problems here in Nova Scotia. Niki will also give us a quick video tour of her greenhouse and cold frames for inspiration!

A link to the virtual meeting will be sent to members only.

We welcome new members any time. Join the Club and enjoy our programming until May. We are reachable through our Facebook group or by email at contact@hpagc.ca.

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club will host a virtual tour of a local garden for inspiration. Jay Wesley, retired Horticulture Supervisor for HRM's Parks and Spaces, including the Public Gardens, will show us his Halifax Japanese woodland garden, with its evergreens, bamboo and grasses, over the course of a year. Jay will also talk about working towards a reduced-maintenance garden. With his extensive experience, Jay will answer our broader questions regarding ornamental gardening. A link to the virtual meeting will be sent to members only.

We welcome new members any time. Join the Club and enjoy our programming until May. We are reachable through our Facebook group or by email at contact@hpagc.ca.

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club will host a virtual meeting. Our guest speaker will take us for an inside look into a year of small-scale seed production at Yonder Hill Farm, a small diversified farm in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia. We’ll learn about starting seeds and planting, as well as harvesting and processing seeds. A link to the virtual meeting will be sent to members only.

We welcome new members any time. Join the Club and enjoy our programming until May. We are reachable through our Facebook group or by email at contact@hpagc.ca.

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club's October meeting will be a Fall Garden tour! We'll visit a lovely local garden with lots of Autumn interest, and be inspired by how beautiful a garden can look beyond the green and blooms of summer. The garden Tour will take place on Saturday, Oct 4 at 2:00 pm in the Bedford area.

PLEASE NOTE: The garden tour and future meetings will only be open to Club members with membership renewed for the 2020-21 season. Details on the location of the October Garden Tour will only be sent to those with confirmed membership.

If you want to renew membership or join the Club, please let us know by email at contact@hpagc.ca. Membership dues can be paid by e-transfer, or by cash or cheque at the garden tour or by other arrangement.

This month we’ll meet outside! Saturday, Sept 19 at 9:00 am at the William E. Frank Live More Park located on the front lawn of Northwood’s Ivany Place at 123 Gary Martin Drive in Bedford (just behind the BMO Centre). We’ll have a walk around the garden, which features some lovely landscaping as well as raised vegetable beds available for rent and currently planted with lots of vegetables ready to harvest, as well as flowers. We’ll discuss the challenges and successes we’ve experienced with our own gardens. It’s a great opportunity to ask questions and share information.

We’ll also do membership renewals and hope to have membership cards to hand out. Remember, many nurseries will give a discount to garden club members! Non-members are welcome to try the September meeting for free. Membership dues are $20 for individuals and $30 per couple/2 family members. Membership provides access to all meetings and guest speaker talks up to May 2021.

We ask that you bring the following to the September meeting in respect of Covid precautions:

• mask (required by Ivany Place when we walk around the garden and cannot maintain a 6-foot distance)
• lawn chair (we’ll set up 6 feet apart and do not have to wear a mask while seated)
• your own beverage and snack
• Also, dress appropriately! We’ll be outside for about 90 minutes.

We are also available via our Club Facebook Page.

If you have any questions, email contact@hpagc.ca or call Wendy at 902-835-3592.

Looking for artistic ideas to add something fabulous to your garden? Gorgeous containers, garden art and outdoor decor are just some of what you'll see. Join us for our second virtual meeting. Our speaker Stephanie Rose hails from Vancouver BC and is the founder of GardenTherapy.ca. She is an award-winning author, freelance writer, and instructor who aims to encourage wellness and healing through gardening. Stephanie will open up the creative vault to DIYs that are easy to make but look like they should be displayed at a show garden. Many of these projects can be done in an hour but the benefit of a little Garden Therapy will provide a boost to well- being for much longer.

With all of us isolating at home during this time, the HPAGC is excited to host our first virtual meeting on April 22 at 7:30 pm. Master Gardener Heather Connors-Dunphy will share her knowledge of Container Gardening. An email with instructions was sent to Club members on April 19. Check your spam folders if you have not seen it. Please note that we have recently revised our email list to reflect our current membership. This is available to those with paid membership in our garden club for our current season (September 2019 to May 2020). Stay safe and best wishes on your gardening endeavours!

The HPAGC will welcome Lloyd Mapplebeck of Hillendale Perennials to teach us about alternatives to chemicals in the garden, with benefits both for our health and the health of pollinators.

March 16 Update: Given the current situation with the pandemic, our March 25 meeting is cancelled. We’ll have Llyod Mapplebeck speak to the Club at some point in the future. Stay tuned regarding the status of upcoming meetings over the next couple of months. Stay healthy fellow gardeners – social distancing and hand washing! Gardening season is soon starting – enjoy!

Niki Jabbour will be our guest speaker and will provide an overview on growing vegetables and herbs in gardens and containers. She'll cover the benefits of raised beds and growing in pots, soil building and care, fertilizing, green manures and succession planting. She'll also highlight some of her favourite vegetables to grow. Our DIY will demonstrate how to make soil blocks to start seedlings. Non members can attend for a fee of $10.

We'll put on Seed Starting 101 (demonstration and step by step instructions on how to start seeds and successfully grow seedlings), plus members' Seed Exchange, and we'll introduce our Seed Order for this year (there will be some freebies for members!)

Christmas social with Yankee gift swap, Members will share how to overwinter their favorite annual plant, and a seasonal DIY: making a Santa gnome from evergreen boughs!

See the mail-out for details on what to do ahead of the meeting.

We welcomes guest speaker Allan Banks, who will tell us about the development of the beautiful and inspiring Harbour Breezes with its stunning commercial hilltop gardens overlooking Jeddore Harbour. With lots of photos, Allan will tell us about developing his coastal hillside gardens and will speak about some of the daylilies (that he has registered and named) and Japanese irises that he grows and sells.

We resume monthly meetings with a talk by David Currie, president of the Nova Scotia Bird Society, who will talk about Birds in Our Gardens. Birds and gardens seem to go together, don’t they?

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club will hold a Plant Sale at the Bedford Hammonds Plains Community Centre, next to the CPA High School at 202 Innovation Drive, Bedford. We’ll have plants from member gardens including perennials, shrubs, and berry bushes, as well as annual flower and vegetable transplants grown by members. For sun, part sun and shade!

Check our Club Facebook page for updates on specific plants that will be available.

Our May 22 meeting has lots to offer. Paul Manning, postdoctoral researcher at Dalhousie University and insect expert, will be our guest speaker, talking about Bugs - Good & Bad in the Garden (just in time for the growing season!).

We'll also hold our end of season Club Social, with extra snacks, and Plant Exchange (bring in 2 plants, go home with 2 different plants!).

On April 24, Marion Munro, retired Curator of Botany with the Nova Scotia Museum, will return, sharing some food and recipes using native plants collected while foraging this past summer. We’re not sure about the menu, but she’s asked us to bring ice cream!

The Prospect Garden Club will be our guests.

On February 27 the Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club is holding our annual Member Show & Tell, when our members share favorite gardening-related tools, hacks and projects.

If you know anyone who is curious about the Club, it is a good time to bring them along because February's meeting is free! This month, members will do all the talking. We'll look at photos and pass around recommended items! Questions and discussion are welcome.

On January 23 the Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club will learn about growing a Cutting Garden from guest speaker Lloyd Mapplebeck of Hillendale Perennials.

We'll also introduce this year’s seed order, which will include seeds for plants Lloyd recommends for flower cuttings, as well as a selection of vegetables and pollinator-attracting flowers recommended especially for us by Niki Jabbour for 2019. The Club will pay the taxes and shipping! The order can be placed at the meeting or submitted online. Members will also receive free seeds again this year!

Nikki Jabbour: Harvest Show and Tell

Veggies and Pollinator-attracting Flowers

The Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club is back to meeting monthly, beginning Sept 26th with a special Harvest Show and Tell led by our favorite gardener, Niki Jabbour! We’re excited to start our 2018-19 meeting season with this follow up to Niki’s February talk on trying unusual vegetables. Niki will bring in some of those unusual veggies from her garden to show us and talk about. She’ll also answer our gardening questions!

Additionally, we invite our members to bring in veggies or pollinator-attracting flowers from your own garden. We’d love to see your favorite or unusual veggies, or produce from the seeds you got through the Club this year. If you want to bring in a dish made with your produce for sampling, that would be awesome! Recipes would also be very welcomed. None of this is required to attend the meeting. But we are aiming for an informal, hands on evening with lots of information, inspiration and lessons learned. Please let Trish know if you’re planning to bring something in, so we can set up enough tables!

The meeting is only open to Club members. No guests please, unless they are joining the Club. Niki is always a popular speaker and draws a big crowd, and we want to make sure our Club members enjoy the evening.

We’ll renew memberships and register new members ahead of the meeting from 6:30 to 7:00pm. Dues are $20 for individual membership or $30 for a joint membership (couple/family).

Member Showcase – for this annual event, our members will "share" – whether it’s bringing in a favorite gardening tool, or presenting a slide show of a garden project or favorite plants - we’ll learn more about each other and get some useful ideas too (just in time for the growing season)!

Plus, we’ll hold our popular plant exchange. We’ll then close out the meeting season with a Social - the Club will provide snacks and refreshments!

Club members David and Mary Trott will share their impressive garden through a video tour. We also hope to have a speaker from Common Roots Urban Farm, to tell us about the community farm in downtown Halifax, with 175 plots rented by community members, common areas open to the public, and a market garden for vegetables and flowers for donation and sale.

Marian Munro, the Curator of Botany with the Nova Scotia Museum, will talk about working with nature as we garden. As an avid NON-gardener, Marian will present a botanist’s view of Nova Scotia gardening using native species. Steeped in folklore, ethnobotany and very little horse sense, her talk promises to engage and provoke!

We’ll announce the annual flower the Club is providing free to Club members this year (every member will receive a 6-cell pack of a hard-to-find annual!). Our DIY will be a solar lamp from re-purposed items!

Niki Jabbour will be our guest speaker and she’ll share ideas for re-imagining our vegetable gardens, based on her just-released book "Veggie Garden Remix". She’ll also talk about how to take proper care of our gardens during the growing season. Niki will have copies of her book available for purchase. If that’s not exciting enough, Garden Club members will receive seeds for a vegetable and an annual flower mentioned in Niki’s talk!

Plus, members will be able to place a seed order from a selection of vegetables and pollinator-friendly annuals she recommends! The order is due at the meeting and the Club will pay the taxes, shipping and Duty!!! The talk is free to members of the Hammonds Plains Area Garden Club. Non-members can attend for a fee of $10 (or join the club for $20 and have access to all meetings and guest speaker talks up to September 2018). Only Club members will receive the seed gift and can place a seed order.

Michelle McPherson, with the NS Beekeeper Association, will talk to us about how we can help bee populations rebound by providing healthy backyard habitat and gardens for native and honey bees.

Seed Order #1 is due February 1 – members will receive details by email once the 2018 seed Catalogue is out! The Club will pay the shipping and taxes, so you don’t have to! 😊

We're hosting Master Gardeners this month. They'll teach us how to collect and store seeds from plants in our own gardens (what, when and how), answer our gardening questions, and tell us about the Master Gardener Program (an online course which is part of Dalhousie Agricultural Program).

Plus, we’ll hold a Seed Swap! Bring your extra seeds for vegetables, annuals and perennials (although you do not have to bring seeds in order to participate). Thanks to Niki Jabbour, I'll bring seeds from her Lemon Cucumbers to share!

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Peter Steeper of Granite Perspectives will teach us How to Photograph Your Garden. This will include lessons on photo composition, making the most of natural light, and how to achieve sharp images, as well as ideas for interesting and beautiful images of our gardens and plants. The talk will be general enough to apply to whatever you're using to take photos—from a smart phone to a digital SLR camera. Non-members can attend for a fee of $10.

We are also working on ideas for our annual plant exchange. Details coming soon!

How to have a garden with a busy life: Join us for a presentation on Low Maintenance Gardening by well-known local gardening expert Marjorie Willison.

The Prospect Area Garden Club will be our guests!

Add interest to your outdoor space. Is there something you'd like to learn about? Solar lighting DIY? Wind chime crafts? Outdoor decor? Let us know!

Hardscapes are the bones of great gardens. Get inspired with ideas for patios, walls, and pathways in a presentation by Bergman Landscape and Masonry.

Start Spring indoors! Learn to force flowering branches such as Forsythia for an Easter Egg Tree.

Join us for a presentation by well-known local gardening expert Niki Jabbour about ornamental plants and edibles that play nicely together in gardens and containers.

Embrace the cold and add magic to your outdoors in Winter: Learn to make Ice Lanterns.

Plant orders are due online March 9, 2016.