President’s Report | Cowichan Valley Garden Club

President’s Report, January 2025

The next Cowichan Valley Garden Club Meeting will be held Wednesday, January 8th, 2025, at Duncan United Church (246 Ingram Street). Meeting starts at 7:00pm. Doors will open at 6:30 pm.

Happy New Year! I hope everyone a lovely holiday season and is ready to get back to the serious business of gardening!

Our speaker for the January 8 meeting is Victor Vesely, founder and tea maker at Westholme Tea Company. His topic is ‘Steeped in Nature – The Adventure of Growing Tea in the Cowichan Valley’. Victor has travelled many roads and has had many careers leading to his creation of Canada’s first and only tea farm.
Join Victor as he presents his adventurous journey of planting tea (Camellia sinensis) in 2010 and the trials and tribulations of growing tea and launching Canada’s first rare terroir tea in 2016. He will share insights into developing tea culture on Vancouver Island. You will learn the basics of tea making and how Westholme Tea Company creates a very unique tea experience steeped in information, knowledge and wisdom.

Our hard-working parlor show committee has come up with another year of exciting entry classes for each month. New this year is a nonjudged class called “Don’t Judge Me” for any decorative or horticultural entry you would like to show but not have judged. Something you bring strictly for our viewing enjoyment. This will be a monthly feature of the parlor show (this replaces the old “Anything Goes” category but adds a flower design aspect.) There are still many judged classes each month in both decorative and horticultural categories. This month’s judged categories include:

“Year of the Snake” – a curved line design
“Snow Storm” – a diagonal line design
Other categories include Winter Aconite, berried branch, witch hazel, indoor potted plants, garlic bulb and stored vegetables as well as our usual Surprise Us category if you have anything delightful we just have to see and would like judged.

Please refer to the website for more information.

We ask that Parlor Show Entries be placed on the table by 6:45 PM. This will give time for judging before the meeting begins. Thanks in advance for your assistance with this.
A reminder to all members to scour your sheds, yards and garages for any gardening related items for the monthly plant sale table. At this time of year our set-up team needs help finding items for the table. Be creative!!

As promised, this month I will begin the discussion about our future involvement in the Cowichan Exhibition. This discussion has come about because of legitimate concerns about the lack of participation of our members in entering the fair (only about 10 members entered exhibits), and the increasing difficulty filling the volunteer positions required to ensure success (30 volunteers for 50+ positions). As we have about 90 members those numbers seem to indicate a lack of interest.
We are committed to keeping our current level of involvement for the 2025 exhibition as it would be unfair to the fair organizers to make a change at this point. But beyond 2025…should we drop our involvement; should we reduce our involvement; should we continue as in the past; how can we make it easier if we continue? This is an important issue to some members and I hope to handle this discussion in a sensitive manner.
Nothing will be decided until everyone has had a chance to give their opinion/ideas. To this end I intend to open as many means of communication as possible. We will have a brainstorming period during the next meeting and possibly in February as well. As well I encourage anyone who does not attend meetings or feels uncomfortable speaking at the meetings to email me at presidentcvgc@gmail.com or marlene@helmsman.ca or call or text me at 403-651-5191 with your thoughts. (Please do not reply to this email as those messages do not come to me). Pen and paper will also be provided at meetings to anyone who would prefer to write down their thoughts.
I also realize that some of you will not have a strong opinion but that is important for us to know too! What we really need is a good sense of the percentage of members who are wanting to participate by entering and volunteering, and who are not interested and would rather not volunteer. Please take a moment to tell me your opinion!

Looking forward to seeing you next week.
Marlene Karmann
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Our mailing address is:
*PO Box 917, Duncan, BC, Canada, V9L 3Y2*