Petal Pushers Garden Club Meeting Minutes, October 22, 2024

submitted by Pam Walker

Meeting Location: The Garden Center Grace Barnes room

Business Meeting:

We voted to purchase gardening gloves to be used as gifts for the April 2025 NM State Gardening Convention which will be held in Albuquerque.

Pam Perez gave us an update on the upcoming Halloween Glow ‘n’ Stroll. Petal Pushers are responsible for decorating the section of the north garden near the flagpole and our theme is spiders. Pam passed around a signup sheet for work shifts set up on Friday, the event on Saturday, and cleanup on Sunday.

October 11 was autumn workday at the garden center. There were about 30 people who showed up to work in all areas of the gardens. Afterwards, we had grilled hotdogs on the back patio as our reward!

October 16 was a day to make Linus blankets at Pam Perez’s house, but no one showed up except for Ginny. Please RSVP to the host or organizer for future events.

We spent the rest of the meeting in the prep room cutting our jack-o-lanterns. There were lots of cute ideas and lots of messy seeds. Pam Perez took them home and will bring them to the event Saturday.

Refreshments were provided by Carol Stomp and Shirley Bray.

December 12 will be the annual volunteer luncheon. If you volunteered for anything at the garden center, you’re invited. More details to follow in November.

Next Meeting:

November 19, 2024 – The topic will be “Reducing Food Waste from the Garden” by Amber Benson, NM State University

Orchid Guild March Meeting

Please join us on Sunday, March 9th at the Albuquerque Garden Center, 10120 Lomas Blvd NE, at 1:30 PM when our Zoom speaker will be Eron Borne. His topic will be:

Growing Phragmipediums in Warm Climates

This presentation is on Growing Phragmipediums in warm climates. One of Eron’s specialties and the genera he is most passionate about are the Phragmipediums, which he has been growing in Louisiana for the past 15 years, and has even done his own hybridizing with them. He currently has about 150+ Phragmipediums in his collection, successfully growing most of the species here in the deep south. Before growing his Phragmipediums in a greenhouse, he grew them under lights and on a windowsill. He has received numerous AOS awards on his Phragmipediums to date. Eron has also won show trophies for Best Grown Plant and Best Flower in the Cypripedium Alliance with his Phragmipediums.

Professionally, Eron is a pilot, but he is also a very diverse orchid grower and breeder. He received his first orchid (a cattleya) as a gift from his dad in 2002 and first started growing them hanging outside, on windowsills, and then under lights. His orchid collection really took off in 2008 after he built a greenhouse and now has about 1000 orchids. He specializes in Phragmipediums and blue Cattleyas, and has even done his own hybridizing with them. His most recent passion are the Vandas!

Email: Orchidsinabq@gmail.com for the Zoom link

NM Dahlia Society 2025 Meetings

Anyone interested in Dahlias is invited to our meetings.