Field Trip – Festival of Trees Orlando

November 16, 2024

Fill in the Registration Form and you will be automatically registered for the Field Trip. You will receive an email confirmation. To make sure the confirmation does not land in your spam folder, please add the Garden Club email address –GARDENCLUBOFCELEBRATION@GMAIL.COM – to your contacts. Please be sure to purchase you tickets for the event in advance from EventBrite – Link to purchase tickets.
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Add a Pollinator Garden to Your Yard

The Celebration Garden Club supports the planting of pollinator plants in Celebration gardens. These gardens attract pollinator insects and help increase their numbers​​by giving them food sources that are being wiped out through urban expansion and herbicide/pesticide use.

The Club has an anonymous donor who will reimburse half the cost of planting pollinator gardens! Just get your plants from Green Isle Gardens, near Clermont, and send the receipt and your contact information to docwags@gmail.comYou will be reimbursed as soon as your receipt is received. 

Green Isle Gardens is a wonderful nursery with helpful staff who can help you with your plant list, even if you know very little about good pollinator plants for this area. You can also find a list of good pollinator plants online.  So please help out the pollinators (butterflies, moths, and bees) while helping out your pocketbook. The Garden Club thanks you!


Before you start planting your own pollinator garden, it’s important to review theDesign Guidelines/Plant Guides and receive ARC approval. This step ensures that your garden not only supports our local ecosystem but also enhances the beauty of our community.

Be a part of taking the Great Southeast Pollinator Census

Garden enthusiasts in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida will counting pollinators on Saturday and Sunday this weekend. Cindy, who is working on her Master Gardener certification, will supervise counting at the new, pollinator garden in Deer Woods Park, and she is inviting you to help with the census.

Your job, should you choose to accept? Pick a plant in the park and watch it for 15 minutes, counting how many pollinators visit the plant during that time. Report your count to Cindy, who will be uploading the information to a website that will be recording counts from all four states.

As an added bonus, free LEMONAIDE (while supply lasts).

Earth Day 2024

We are having a Memorial Garden Clean Up starting at 8 a.m. (before the heat of the day). Anyone interested in helping please come with a trowel to dig out some overgrown ground covers, clippers to trim dead flower stalks and your weed pulling hands to spruce up the area. This will take an hour or two, so be sure to bring water! Meryl Rachin is heading up this Spring Cleanup.

The second event is a program at Town Hall in conjunction with Grand Manors. They are sponsoring an Earth Day event from 5:00-6:00 p.m. and we need 3-4 volunteers to help at a potting table. The town is supplying pots for the kids to decorate. We will fill those pots with potting soil and have seeds that they can plant and take home. We will supply them with a care sheet so that they can keep the plants alive after they sprout. Jaime Eriks will be leading this program.

If you can attend either event, please email us at gardenclubofcelebration@gmail.com

Supporting Audubon Center for Birds of Prey

At our club meeting on March 13 we had an excellent presentation by representative of the Audubon Center for Bird of Prey in Maitland. Club members were so impressed by the presentation that it was decided to support them with donations at our Club Luncheon on April 10. Posted below is their Wish List and everyone attending the luncheon is invited to bring a donation. Click on the image to enlarge.

UpComing Plant Sales

If you are looking to add new plants to spruce up your home, deck or balcony, you might want to visit one of these two good plant sales coming up in the next couple of weeks. A number of club members that are Master Gardeners are helping with the first sale this next weekend. We have at least seven Master Gardeners in our club currently.  That is over 10% of all Master Gardeners in Osceola County!

February 24th is the Master Gardener plant sale. Over 30 vendors with their wares along with food trucks and things for the kids to do. 

March 9th and 10th is the Annual Plant Sale at Leu Gardens. Visit the Leu Gardens Website for more information.

A Message from President Brad

This newsletter I am forwarding to all of you is put out quarterly. 

Don Kendzior was the club speaker that talked about raccoons and hummingbirds several years and his group puts out his great informational letter (One of my daughters does some of the editing work for him while she lives out in Tacoma, WA). If you like what he has to say and want to get his newsletter each time it comes out, contact him and get on his mailing list. It is full of interesting info. 

As you know I am in Europe right now while Jaime and crew ably take care of the club duties. She ran our September meeting, set up the fall field trips, worked on the new web sight with Linda, ran a club table at the Home Expo in November, WILL run two Farmers Market booths, works with Sean on the pine straw sale and writes up the Celebration Newsletter for me. She is a tireless worker and I am so glad she and husband Jeff have joined our board. We couldn’t run the club so well this fall without them.   Thank you!!  Jeff is our club Secretary but he is also the photographer at club events and is helping me and Paul Dunlop with the Poinsettia sale

Speaking of which, the sale has started and plants can be ordered from the website. Go to our newly redesigned website and see all the changes and additions that Linda Quinn has come up with for us. Kudos to you. We want the site to be informational as well as a marketplace for our sales. We want to get a Master Gardener section implemented this year where you, or anyone in town, can ask questions about their plants and we will try to answer them. We have a number of Master Gardeners in the club(several new members among them)and currently have one member currently being trained. Carolyn Gezon is her name.

So check out the site and while you are there order some plants. Or pine straw! We have already sold 2/3 of the trailer so don’t delay if you want to get some. And wish Sean, who took over from Dave as head of the pine straw sale here in town, quick recovery from a little medical issue. Thanks Sean. We are thinking of you.

Sue and I are currently in Granada, Spain and just halfway through our Spain and Portugal visit. Then we will cruise back home to see you all at the November meeting. We can always use more help with club activities. The luncheon, clean up at the Memorial Garden later this month(thanks Meryl!), running the farmer market booths where we will be selling poinsettias, set up prior to meetings and food goodies for the great hospitality table are all ways we could use your help. (A little by all keeps a few from being overloaded with work to get the job done)

A long letter I ended up putting out where I had intended to just forward the newsletter from Don Kendzior!  But so much work has been put forth to run the club this fall. We had lots of meetings his summer to bring everyone to speed and our club helpers have surpassed my wildest dreams as to how the club is running. Thanks again Jaime, Jeff, Meryl, Linda etc, etc.  

Brad Wagoner

Celebration Garden Club  President (on leave for now)

Here is Dons newsletter. 

Autumn Greetings!
The fall issue of N2Nature is here and full of great features!
Main Features:Living Smart: Learn about the tiny house movement.
Saving Nature:  See the great work of Bat Conservation International.
Nature Connection: Chip Taylor, founder of Monarch Watch, shares his personal nature connection.
Noah’s Animal Notes: Learn all about monarch butterflies.


Seasonal Features:
Eco-Travel: Explore Costa Rica!
Celebrate the Season: See the vibrant cultural celebration of Dia de los Muertos!
Eco-Tips: Our fall home and garden eco-tips.
Ask the Naturalist: Why do birds migrate? Why do leaves change color? What are citizen science programs?
Naturetainment: Enjoy our nature themed entertainment picks this fall.We hope you enjoy this issue and have a wonderful fall!