Jordan Valley Home & Garden Club– History

I have wanted to start a ‘Gar­den Club’ here locally for more than a decade.  I had the great oppor­tu­nity of pro­vid­ing staff sup­port to the Sandy Gar­den Club many years ago when I was fresh out of col­lege and work­ing as a City employee in Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment. My pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences with that Club sparked a great inter­est in cre­at­ing a club in my neigh­bor­hood when the time was right.  Then there were 3 kids in 3 years.  And try­ing to get my own land­scap­ing done.  A busi­ness or two. And– oh yeah– that mas­sive pub­lic play­ground project I helped spear­head which took sev­eral years.  The tim­ing for a Club just wasn’t right.

Utah-history based play­ground designed, in part, by ele­men­tary school kids from 17 schools and built by 6,000 vol­un­teers over a 10 day period in May, 2005.

In 2007 I started vol­un­teer­ing at the fledg­ling “Con­ser­va­tion Gar­den Park” down the street from my house.  I had heard they wanted to build an Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter and I thought it could be the per­fect ‘home’ for a Gar­den Club.  Armed with the com­mu­nity orga­niz­ing and fundrais­ing skills I gained via the play­ground project, I decided to help get the Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter built by serv­ing on their Advi­sory Coun­cil and assist­ing with fundrais­ing.  Can you see how much I wanted to make this group happen?

Con­ser­va­tion Gar­den Park Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter, opened Jan­u­ary 2012

I dis­cov­ered blog­ging in 2008 and started my own lit­tle Mom Blog (Cre­ative Chaos) which I still try and update from time to time.  Blog­ging opened up a whole new world to me and I became par­tic­u­larly fas­ci­nated by the DIY projects that so many inter­est­ing home blog­gers were accom­plish­ing– though there were many fewer gar­den blogs to be found on that sub­ject.  I knew I wanted my “Gar­den Club” to have that ele­ment to it.  After­all, what good is edu­ca­tion if peo­ple don’t have the skills to imple­ment what they’ve learned?

I was lucky to be hired to work for the Con­ser­va­tion Gar­den Park in Fall of 2010 and one of my first goals was to imple­ment the Club. As I researched ‘Gar­den Clubs’ I dis­cov­ered that the stan­dard for­mat for them hadn’t changed since they began in the 1900s!  Most peo­ple don’t live the way they did back then and I couldn’t imag­ine a monthly Club based pri­mar­ily on com­pet­i­tive flower arrang­ing!  It didn’t take long to real­ize we were going to need to do some­thing rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent that would totally break the mold– and noth­ing gets my cre­ative juices flow­ing more than attempt­ing some­thing out-of-the-box crazy (see play­ground project above)! 

Design Path Exhibits at Con­ser­va­tion Gar­den Park

The mis­sion of Con­ser­va­tion Gar­den Park is to edu­cate EVERYONE with a land­scape to care for– not just those who self-identify as gar­den­ers.  We decided that peo­ple who care about the INSIDE of their homes, likely want the out­side to look nice too– whether or not they wish to spend a lot of time there.  Our Gar­den is about prac­ti­cal LANDSCAPING ideas that home­own­ers can imple­ment and our “Club” should be the same. The idea for a “Home & Gar­den Club” was the nat­ural con­clu­sion to the above considerations. 

Most “Gar­den Clubs” are exclu­sive orga­ni­za­tions for those invited to join.  We wanted to be the polar oppo­site of THAT par­a­digm too!  Any­one who wants to learn is wel­come.  Live out­side of our area? No prob­lem– we’re hav­ing a sig­nif­i­cant online com­po­nent to ensure any­one who wants to par­tic­i­pate on some level is able to do so.  A big part of the Club is help­ing peo­ple build their con­fi­dence and abil­i­ties to tackle home and/or yard projects.  If you can do one suc­cess­fully, you can do the other.  DIY skills are DIY skills– whether they are applied inside or outside.

A view of part of the Gar­den sur­round­ing the Edu­ca­tion Center

In the last few months I’ve been hon­ored to have some won­der­ful women join the effort to launch the Club.  I am so thank­ful for their ideas, energy, help and sup­port.  Since the for­mat and goal of this Club is so dif­fer­ent than any­thing peo­ple are famil­iar with, it can be hard to explain what it is and how it will func­tion.  The women cur­rently help­ing with the group imme­di­ately grasped the con­cept and have been an inte­gral part of vision­ing and cre­at­ing this Club! And hey– if you want to help us move the Club for­ward, we’re happy to have YOU serve along­side us and make a dif­fer­ence in our com­mu­ni­ties! We’re open to con­sider all ideas! E-mail me and we’d love to include you.

There is a charge for spe­cial events ($10 for the Super Awe­some kick-off party on June 9th) but mem­ber­ship in the Club is free.  We will host real-world classes once per month in the Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter at Con­ser­va­tion Gar­den Park.  The monthly classes are free.  We will post a short video of the high­lights from classes on our Face­book Page and/or Blog.

I’ll be hon­est– it’s a lit­tle scary to have nutured the seed for this Club for 10 years then fling it out to the world and hope that oth­ers see the value in it.  I have a bit of a fear of fail­ure here. What if peo­ple don’t LIKE this idea?  What if it they think it’s great– just not for them?  What if all the hours of plan­ning and loss of sleep don’t really amount to any­thing?  I guess one way or another, it’s time to find out!

I will post later about our “Sum­mer Soiree” event in more detail.  It’s going to be one heck of a kick­off party thanks to the vision of:

Emily, Jeni, Leanne, Jes­sica, Judi, Joy, Jamie, Sausha, Cas­sity, Mindy, and Wendy. 

Thanks for giv­ing your time and lever­ag­ing your rep­u­ta­tions to make this thing hap­pen– it could NEVER have hap­pened with­out you!  Now go check out the Club web­site then get your ticket for the Sum­mer Soiree!  Great classes, awe­some com­pany, deli­cious food and incred­i­ble music all hap­pen­ing in a gor­geous 5 acre gar­den.  It’s a rare oppor­tu­nity to enjoy an event like this unless you’re on the ‘social cir­cuit’ for the well-to-do.  Don’t miss your chance to enjoy an enchant­ing gar­den party and meet other peo­ple who love the same things YOU do!

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