{"id":20458,"date":"2018-04-25T21:15:28","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T01:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20458"},"modified":"2018-05-02T15:35:12","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T19:35:12","slug":"garden-club-celebrates-100-years-of-strong-community-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/garden-club-celebrates-100-years-of-strong-community-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"Garden Club celebrates 100 years of strong community roots"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

At its founding in 1918, Canada was in the dying days of the First World War.
\nResources were scarce, the country was battle-weary and, more often than not, gardeners were looking to their own plots of soil to grow vegetables to make their meals go the extra mile.
\nIt was in this environment that the Aurora Garden and Horticultural Society first took root.
\nEverything, however, is cyclical and, as they prepare to mark their 100th anniversary this Saturday, new members are once again looking at their soil as a precious resource, a resource which can not only help all-important pollinators, but help them \u201ceat local\u201d as well.
\nThe Aurora Garden and Horticultural Society, colloquially known as Garden Aurora, will mark its centenary this Saturday with an Annual General Meeting featuring a talk by renowned Canadian gardener Mark Cullen.
\nIt is the first of a full slate of events to commemorate their remarkable anniversary, longevity that has been hallmarked by, well, let\u2019s let Garden Club Board Member Donna Lewis take it from here:
\n\u201cSurvival,\u201d says Ms. Lewis. \u201cWe like to say we\u2019re rooted in our town and rooted in our community. The garden Club has been part of the community for 100 years. 100 years ago, they were thinking about victory gardens to help the war effort, grow your own food. Now, we\u2019re also doing victory gardens for pollinators, gardens for the 100 Mile Diet. There is a lot of information people need and you can\u2019t just go to YouTube for some of the stuff you need to know. You have to be able to go and talk to people and we have wonderful members that like to share their knowledge \u2013 they just want somebody to ask them the question.\u201d
\nThe first meeting of the Aurora Horticultural Society was held on April 23, 1918 at what was then Aurora\u2019s Town Hall. The first meeting came after a group of representatives presented a 60 signature petition requesting official status for the Aurora Horticultural Society.
\nW.H. Fleury was elected the organization\u2019s first President, with Thomas Sisman serving as First Vice President and Dr. W.J. Stevenson serving under him.
\nThe first general meeting was held on May 27, 1919.
\nTheir objective from the outset was \u201cbeautifying the Town through public plantings\u201d and educating new members about the positive effects gardening had on the environment.
\nThis is very much the philosophy which drives the club 100 years later.
\n\u201cPeople are very much more aware that being outside and interacting with nature is a healthy way to de-stress,\u201d says Ms. Lewis. \u201cNew members who come to us, whether they have a plot of land or not, even just have house plants, still find the benefit of coming to us. People don\u2019t often realise that some things you have to see, touch, smell and feel to truly appreciate what is there.\u201d
\nJoining the Garden Club, adds member Branislava Milosevic, gives members \u201can opportunity to learn and garden beyond their yards.\u201d
\n\u201cThrough talking, visiting [other gardens on their annual Garden Tour], and seeing things, it enlarges your scope of gardening and we all do work as a team,\u201d she says. \u201cFriendships develop and you start feeling like it is your garden family \u2013 that\u2019s what keeps us too.\u201d
\nAnother member of the \u201cgarden family\u201d, Cindy Scythes, identifies the camaraderie that comes out of the Garden Club.
\n\u201cI have been a member for 12 years and I am just your average home gardener,\u201d says Ms. Scythes. \u201cI joined because I just like to garden and wanted to talk to people about gardening. When we started 100 years ago, the objects were fairly similar to now. They were trying to beautify Aurora, it was about education and people wanting to plant.\u201d
\nSince that time, says Ms. Scythes, the Garden Club has branched out once again beyond their membership to enrich the community in partnerships ranging from decorating Hillary House National Historic Site seasonally to partnering with the Alzheimer Society of York Region on building their therapy garden, which opened last year.
\n\u201cThere is a therapeutic piece to being in nature and working in a garden, whether you have arthritis or, as you get older, just digging in the dirt,\u201d she says.
\nFor many members, the Club provides more than a good excuse to dig in the dirt, it is also very much a creative outlet for participants.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t do anything in my profession that is related to gardens, but I just love nature and am really very for protecting our environment and being careful with what we do to our earth,\u201d says Ms. Milosevic. \u201cI had a friend who was entering flower designs and, because I tend to believe I am artistic and like to experiment with different things, this got me into putting flower arrangements together and I just love it.
\n\u201cThere are all kinds of skills and talents you can develop once you join. I know I can find things on the internet, but it gives you an opportunity to engage all five of your senses, which you cannot do through a website. You learn differently and you experience stuff in a much more natural, nicer way.\u201d
\nAs Ms. Lewis says on why they like to be known as \u201cThe Garden Club,\u201d rather than the more formal \u201cAurora Garden and Horticultural Society,\u201d she says, \u201cWe don\u2019t want people thinking we\u2019re all little blue-haired old ladies with big hats.\u201d
\nThere\u2019s no danger of that as they embark on their milestone year.
\nFor a full slate of upcoming events, including Saturday\u2019s centenary meeting, as well as the popular Annual Plant Sale on May 27, visit www.gardenaurora.ca. <\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora Garden & Horticultural Society celebrates centenary on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/2018-04-26-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5jY","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-24 23:04:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}