May 18 Newsletter: Your St. Albert & District Garden Club

Let’s get one thing straight: members of the St. Albert Garden Club (SAGC) have very green thumbs and are proud of it. They’re the secret agents for the city’s gardens—always making sure the roots of horticultural knowledge get the air and nutrients to keep this city growing. You may not know about the club, but you’ve probably seen their work when you see a wave of petunias growing in the city’s large planter on Perron Street.

The SAGC was founded in February of 1982 to bring together like-minded people and to set forth very specific duties to keep this city green and as natural as can be. Some of these duties include sharing their knowledge and love of gardening with all who want it, encouraging residents and the municipality to beautify the city, helping to preserve the green spaces and native plants in and around St Albert (especially the Sturgeon River Valley), providing instructional meetings for members and organizing shows and competitions to show off vegetables, flowers and gardens.

There are over 55 members in the SAGC who meet every month to share and receive horticultural info—everything from how to get a good compost pile going to how to cultivate lovely roses over our very short growing season. They also have access to a gardening library with around 200 books. They also organize the Annual Spring Plant Auction and Sale. Local business and members generously donate plants and other gardening paraphernalia for this sale and auction, which is open to all. There are also garden shows, which are held in the Main Lobby of City Hall (a.k.a. St. Albert Place); you may have seen it while heading to the library—all these tables with lovely roses, floral arrangements, vegetables, etc., which leaves the rest of us wondering where we went wrong with our gardens.

There’s no limit to how many people want to become a member. As Patricia Bell, a long-time member of the club, tells us, “We’re not a group of professional gardeners. We share a love of plants and gardening, and our meetings provide an opportunity to learn more and meet friends with similar interests.” If you do want to attend a meeting but are not a member, that’s not a problem. You can pay a drop-in fee of $2. The meetings are usually the second or third Tuesday every month at 7 pm at Sir George Simpson School. Just check their website for details, as well as for other information about gardening. For some gardening blooms, check out our May 2015 issue found here.

Did You Know?

The official flower of St Albert as of 2012 is the Cherry Pink Tidal Wave Petunia.

Fun Facts

Some of the community projects to which the SAGC contribute and participate are:

St Albert Botanic Park petunia bed and donation; Château Mission Court outdoor container planting; Centennial Rose Garden pruning and planting new ones; Ted Hole Memorial Park donations: Perron Street Planter petunia planting; John Beedle Entrance (Red Willow Park) yearly maintenance and planting; Annual Flower and Spring Show at St Albert Place.