Awards are a way to celebrate Garden Club excellence. Achievements are recognized as well as the people behind them. Awards present an opportunity to shine both among Members and the community. This past year the Caro Garden Club worked on many projects that promoted horticulture and conservation in the community. Following are awards that have been received by both community individuals and through participation of club members in our many projects and programs. Congratulations on everyone’s hard work and achievements.
The Caro Garden Club annually sponsors the Hazel J. Spalding High School Essay Contest on environmental issues available to high school students. This year’s first place essay was written by Leslie Licudine, a Caro High School senior, awarding her a prize of $200. She has also received first place in the District VI contest, a $100 prize, and first in the state with a $300 prize. Her essay also received a first place in the Central Region contest and went on to compete Nationally. Her essay, ‘Challenges in Protecting our Natural Habitat’, can be found at this link. Next year’s essay theme will be “Adapting our Actions to Protect our Natural Habitats”
We are proud of the 3 participants in the Youth Sculpture Contest who have placed Nationally. These contest participants are from grades 4 through 8. They create a sculpture using recyclable, reused, and reduced materials, created around the theme “Saving our Planet and Keeping it Green”. Information on this project can be found here.
The Environmental Award- Michigan Award of Merit is awarded for the best project promoting conservation, recycling, other environmental concerns or the best educational environmental program for meetings. This Caro Garden Club project was to create an environmental education experience in our Botanical Garden. If you haven’t visited this garden, it is on the corner of Sherman and Hooper, across from the hospital in Caro. This space has been an ongoing project of the club since early 1980s but recently the club has used the public space to educate the community on conservation issues. We have a pollinator garden, have posted signs to educate our visitors, encourage wildlife food and shelter along with beautiful flower gardens, provide ideas on how to use a small urban space to encourage wildlife habitat, and have included a bubbler fountain to provide a water source for our wild ‘visitors’. The project incorporated community volunteers, assistance from City of Caro, and work by garden club members. This will be an ongoing project.
Two National Garden Club awards were received for the club’s Membership and Publicity through the website and social media. The objective of the Caro Garden Club social media and website is to share information and resources with the community, encouraging appreciation and respect for the environment, conservation of resources, and protection of wildlife, including pollinators and beneficial insects, build interest in the projects of the garden club and encourage outside participation and support, promote the love of gardening and appreciation of floral design, and provide members and public with program and meeting information and to build membership.
The web page address is: https://carogardenclub.wixsite.com/mysite
The Facebook page can be found by searching for: ‘Caro Garden Club’ or
Garden club members depend heavily on their yearbook, provided annually containing important information such as member contacts, by-laws, program schedule, calendar information and more. Our yearbook was judged on structure, content, design, theme, calendar of events, projects, and programming and received 1st in the state for a medium sized club.
Caro Garden Club received two Michigan Garden Club President’s Awards this year. The Michigan Pollinator Gardens Award, 1st place in the state for a medium sized garden club, registering 20 local gardens as pollinator gardens with www.millionpollinatorgardens.org . More on this project can be seen at this link.
The second President’s Award was the Michigan Youth Pollinator Garden Award, judged 1st in District, is awarded to the best judged youth activities project combining youth and gardening for pollinators. The same project also received the Carolyn Gray Award of Merit, judged 1st place District, 3rd place State. This award is sponsored by the Kalamazoo Garden Council and is awarded to an outstanding project with school age children in the area of horticulture, nature study, conservation, flower arranging, beautification, or civic concern. For these awards, several garden club members worked with an after-school program sponsored by the local library and spent time with the elementary aged participants in our botanical garden. Activities included a program about pollinators, a scavenger hunt (including a search for pollinators and their habitat), and guest speaker, Lynette Smith, member of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan, who taught the importance of cultural history, respecting our natural resources, and companion planting in your garden. We now have planted a Three Sisters Garden in our Botanical Garden with an educational sign for all visitors. For more information on this garden, see this link.
The Caro Garden Club continues to work on these and other projects. If you have questions, ideas, suggestions, are interested in participating or in becoming a garden club member, contact us. The information can be found here.
Comments