By Karen England, San Diego Horticultural Society President, for Let's Talk Plants! February 2022.
The San Diego Horticultural Society's Board of Directors has been working hard on your behalf throughout the pandemic and been able to get much accomplished by working together with immense dedication, good humor and grace. This February, in this season of love, I hope you'll take some time to thank them for everything they have done and are doing to make the SDHS grow and blossom in an era where groups such as ours are faced with shuttering doors and closing down.
· Karen England, President, Newsletter Editor-in-chief and SD Hort Book Club Head Muckety-muck
· Ray Brooks, Treasurer
· Ken Kubarych, Secretary and Zoom Coordinator
· Jim Bishop, Publicity Coordinator and Past President
· Roy Wilburn, Scholarships and School Garden Grants Coordinator
· Jason Chen, Member-at-large
· Donna Mallen, Programs Coordinator
· Karon De Leon, Volunteer Coordinator
· Open position, Membership Coordinator
· Christy English, (non-voting) Events Coordinator
· Open position, Garden Tour Committee Chair
Just some of what has been accomplished to date:
- The SDHS Tree Book, Ornamental Trees For Mediterranean Climates by Don Walker and Steve Brigham, is being turned into an eBook! Hurrah! We cannot print the book a third time due to a myriad of reasons. Because of this, we have taken the second edition of the book and had it professionally converted into an eBook so that when we run out of our remaining printed copies we will still have the book to give to new members and to sell.
- We have a YouTube channel. It has most of our meeting recordings, 17 to be exact, from the last year. Check it out! Here's Jim Bishop with the San Diego Super Bloom Of 2019
- We have a new logo! One that supports all of our current endeavors that each have unique specifications for logos; newsletter, website, social media, YouTube, publicity, etc.
- We have filled the vacant (for two years) Volunteer Coordinator Board position. This is a vital job and Karon De Leon deserves your thanks for stepping up and taking this on prior to the upcoming garden tour in Poway. When you thank her, by all means, also VOLUNTEER!
- We almost didn't skip a beat during the pandemic thanks to Zoom!
- We have successfully conducted a remote Zoom meeting from a greenhouse.
- The board is learning how to transition from Zoom-only meetings to the hybrid style meetings of in-person and Zoom combined.
- We are returning to some in-person meetings in 2022, starting with this month at the Water Conservation Garden. In-person meetings will be held in various garden-y locations around the county, and we will also still be having some zoom-only meetings. This is an exciting change to our meeting style and a great way to ease back into a meeting schedule after the lengthy pandemic.
- We are bringing back the newly renamed Coffee In the Gardens - drum-roll please!
The winning new name is - - -
Sharing Gardens
This great new name was submitted by Susan Swift. She will be receiving a $25 gift certificate to Grangetto's, the SDHS sponsor of her choice. Congratulations Susan and thank you for getting us a great new name.
But this now means that you, the SDHS membership need to volunteer to Share Your Garden in 2022 for this event to take place. Sign up to have a Sharing Garden at your place by sending an email to our newly appointed events planner Christy English at SDHS.event@outlook.com.
- We have a vibrant and active horticulturally specific book club on Zoom. See the SD Hort Book Club column in this newsletter for a list of the books that we read in the last year, along with the books we will be reading in the upcoming quarter and how to join in the fun.
- If after reading this, you would like to join this wonderful board, that is doing so many great things, please request a board application via email from info@sdhort.org. There are two board openings currently that need to be filled; Membership Coordinator and Garden Tour Coordinator.
