News 2018

Our club awards grants for many worthy projects. One of the 2018 grants went toward the restoration and landscaping of Hudson’s World War I memorial. The memorial is located near the Boy Scout cabin on the southwest Green. A ceremony on Veteran’s Day commemorated the centennial 1918-2018. Read more about the memorial here.

It’s the perfect time of year to curl up with a book, especially a gardening book! You might want to choose one of the ones that our club has donated during 2018. We donate memorial books in memory of deceased members and also select books on a variety of gardening topics. Here is the list of titles we purchased for the library this year.

Our meeting on December 13 at 6:45p at Laurel Lake will be a hands-on workshop where we will make swags of fresh greens to decorate Hudson’s very first Christkindlmarkt. Bring a plate of cookies to share – that’s a garden club tradition! Christkindlmarkt will be held on the Hudson Green on December 14 to 16. It will feature food, drink, shopping and entertainment. Save some time that weekend to stroll through the market to enjoy the holiday festivities and admire our decorations.

Give a gift can be appreciated twice by gifting presale 2019 Hudson Home and Garden Tour tickets as a holiday present. The proceeds of the tour benefit our community and the recipient will have a wonderful day out with friends. Tickets, $20, are available through Paypal from our website.

Holden Forests & Gardens’ annual winter spectacular, GLOW, returns to the Cleveland Botanical Garden for the holiday season. More than 30 clubs are participating with various designs in keeping with the 2018 theme “Days of Yore…Remember When”. Our Club is again decorating one of the 10’ live Frasier Fir Christmas trees! Our design, “Across the Miles”, features holiday greeting cards donated by our members. So while the trend is for family photo postcards and the number of greeting cards sent each year is decreasing, our design “remembers when” the seasonal artwork and sentiments on Christmas cards were carefully chosen and admired for their sacred, traditional, or modern expressions; often being saved to enjoy through the years. For months HGC’s Glow Girls have cut, punched, sewn, and glued our collection of pretty cards into ornaments and garlands of various shapes and sizes. Make visiting GLOW one of your family’s holiday traditions and be sure to look for our tree!

The traffic circle garden at Aurora Rd and Hudson Street was started a decade ago with funding from a Hudson Garden Club grant. Our club has continued to award grants annually. Have a project in mind? The deadline for the next round of grants is Nov 1. Click here for details and an application..

A field trip to Field of Dreams in Mantua gave members the opportunity to talk with a cut flower grower and to see her growing fields. Bringing home a bouquet was a bonus. Members are notified of field trips in our club newsletter. If you are not a member, join us by completing the membership form and paying the annual dues. You’ll receive the newsletter monthly.

We recently started sharing photos from our members’ gardens on our Facebook page. Like and Follow us so you don’t miss a post!

Ever since the founding of our club in 1933, we have been funding the purchase of trees for Hudson and have been encouraging tree planting by residents on Arbor Day. Mary Griffiths received a Pin Oak seedling when she was a Hudson elementary school student. She planted the tree in her backyard 67 years ago and has tended it ever since. It has grown to be a magnificent specimen. It has been a home for birds and squirrels and its acorns have fed deer and other wildlife. Several of the acorns buried by squirrels and have grown into full size trees not too far from the original tree. The club still gives tree seedlings to children on Arbor Day. Before receiving their tree, the children attend a presentation about trees and tree planting at Eastwood School. 400 trees are packaged and distributed every year. If you would like to volunteer to help with this outreach, or with our other youth programs, please contact us at info@hudsongardenclub.org.

Member Daniella Baloi photographed the 2018 Tour flower arrangements and has posted them in an album at our club’s account at Shutterfly. Our Home and Garden Tour not only showcases outstanding homes and gardens, it is also an extraordinary flower show. Each arrangement reflects not only the room in which it is placed, but also the homeowner’s interests. Often the container used belongs to the homeowner. The flowers are donated from the gardens of our club members and arranged by our top notch Floral Design Committee. Many thanks to all who contribute to make this a very popular and unique part of our annual tour. Here are just a few photos to entice you to check out the album.

In 2012, our club provided a $1,500 grant for the purchase of plants for the Hudson High School Tinker’s Creek Stream Restoration Design-Build Project on the Hudson High School Campus. The photos, taken this year, show a particularly nice stand of Monarda and other plants in full bloom there. In the summer and after school during the school year, park in the small lot on the west side of the high school, then follow the pathway between the playing fields and the creek to enjoy this natural area that serves as an outdoor learning lab for students. Signage explains the project. The streamside plantings are tall and dense but stepping stones provide access to view the creek in several spots.

One stop on the Home and Garden Tour is the Garden Shop at Hudson Middle School on Oviatt Street. Among the many garden-related offerings for sale are plants from the gardens of club members and friends. If you have a few extra divisions from your garden, we would love to have them! Pot them up a few days days before the tour so they are not in shock and be sure to label each one. Download the label forms here.Drop off your donated plants at the Garden Shop from 8am until mid-afternoon on Wednesday, June 13, the day before the Tour. Volunteers will be there to receive your plants and to thank you profusely. Questions? Call Dorothy Malpass at (330) 656-1857.

Presale tickets for the 2018 Home and Garden Tour and the Tour Luncheon at Lake Forest Country Club are now available for purchase at Acme Fresh Market and Learned Owl Bookshop in Hudson. Tickets are $20, cash or check. For credit card purchases visit our online ticket site. Purchasing presale Tour tickets before Tour Days start offers a $5 savings on each Tour ticket.

This year’s tour is June 14 and 15. Buy your tickets for the tour and the luncheon NOW– right on our website. Visit our tour info page for the how-to!.

Every year since the mid-1980s, our club has purchased flowers or plants and delivered them on May 1, May Day. We give them to our city officials, schools, library, police, fire, EMS, post office and numerous others in Hudson. This year we received an unexpected donation of additional flowers from our supplier, Heinen’s. We were able to brighten the day and surprise so many others. We thank Heinen’s for the generous gift. This year’s flowers were African violets.

This year, Lake Forest Country Club has partnered with HGC to offer a special Luncheon on the days of the Tour! This private and historic Country Club, with its elegant Tudor clubhouse and award-winning gardens, will open its doors to all of us, any Tour visitor, and any group or business. For $20, one can choose from several pick two choices, including a vegetarian option. Click here for info on how to purchase advance tickets. Enjoy a lunch out whether or not you are attending the Tour. You’ll be helping our club fund our many worthwhile community projects!

For 30 years, the Hudson Garden Club has welcomed the community to share in the time-honored tradition of spring and fall plant exchanges. Thousands of plants have found new homes and brought joy as they grew. Many were shared again years later, and the cycle continued. In many respects, little has changed from the early days when the rule was “bring a plant, and take a plant, and if you don’t have any plants to share, pay a nominal price per plant to get your garden started.” \

This is not a fundraiser for the club; it truly is sharing plants from our home gardens. It is also a great opportunity to visit Veterans Way Park and meet local gardeners. The next exchange will be Monday, May 21. Check in starts at 6 p.m., exchange opens at 7 p.m. For more info visit our plant exchange website page.

Funding grants that support our mission is one of the uses of the proceeds from the club’s annual Home and Garden Tour. Congratulations to the 2017 Grants winners! These worthy projects are listed here. For more information about the Grants program and the application process, visit our Grants webpage.

New this year, presale tour tickets are available for purchase online through our website via Paypal. These are WILL CALL tickets. Tour patrons will present their Paypal receipt at the Ticket Tent and receive the program/ticket when they attend the Tour. We hope this will eventually replace the old method of mailing a SASE and a check. Read complete details on our new webpage.