Club Affiliations

The Grapevine Garden Club (GGC) strives to support the projects of the National Garden Clubs, Inc. (NGC), Texas Garden Clubs, Inc. (TGC) and District II of the Texas Garden Clubs. The following briefly describes the major projects and themes of these garden club organizations for 2010–2011.

National Garden Clubs, Inc.

National Garden Club President, Shirley Nicolai, is using a theme for the coming two years that recognizes valuable volunteers: NGC: Proudly Serving Our Members and Communities. This theme calls attention to the generous contributions of time and talent made by all volunteers at all levels of the organization, as well as in the countries of our International Affiliate members. Shirley has chosen projects that all clubs can participate in: Plantings for Public and Special Places; Gardens with Edibles; Container Gardens; and Trees and Shrubs. She includes Protecting Aquatic Ecosystems as a project to address environmental concerns and Photo Archiving to document club history and fund raising. Generations for Gardeners is a poetry contest project for garden club members who are grandparents to work with their grandchildren who live in other areas. GGC supports the Natural Disaster USA national project with a $25 donation.

South Central Region

The Grapevine Garden Club will continue to support projects that follow South Central Region Director Judy Grotts’s theme of Share What You Grow – Share What You Know. Educational projects for adults and children will continue as well as the Texas Street Project that creates gardens in an area of subsidized housing and donations to GRACE community garden.

Texas Garden Clubs, Inc.

Texas Garden Club President, Kathy Cox, has chosen as her theme Moving Forward…Green and Clean. Her administration’s project for the next two year is the Edible Green Garden, which encourages members to grow water wise, chemical-free gardens for families, neighborhoods, and communities. The Grapevine Garden club will support this TGC project by making donations of plants to edible gardens in the Grapevine Botanical Gardens and the GRACE community garden. For the second year in a row, GGC donated $25 to the Holistic Garden project.

Kathy Cox has also targeted a cookbook fund raising project with recipes to be submitted by Oct. 1, 2011. With each district contributing 55 recipes, a portion of the book will be dedicated to each district along with their own theme. The District II theme is Boot Scootin’ thru the Bluebonnets. It is hoped these cookbooks will be ready to sell at the spring convention in March, hosted by the Grapevine Garden Club in Grapevine.

The TGC Executive Committee approved the Grapevine Botanical Gardens Greenhouse Project as a TGC contributing project during the spring convention in El Paso. Any TGC member club may support this project by making a donation through TGC, which will benefit the club by earning points toward the club’s Gold Club rating.

District II

Our District II Director, Ginger Jones, has created a theme of One Single Seed Can Harvest Acres of Joy. Her District II project is an Educational Identification Wildscape sign, which is already installed at TGC Headquarters. Jimmie Nell Courtney and Betty Mars will chair this project, and each club is asked to donate a minimum of $10.00 for this worthy project. Native plant information will be added to the back side of the sign. GGC is donating $10 to this project.

Garden Club Council of Fort Worth

Veronica Wingen, president of the Garden Club Council of Ft. Worth, has created a theme of Let’s Get Up and Grow, a call to develop new ideas and reach out to our communities. Veronica recognizes that the mission of the Council is to provide education and networking opportunities for all member clubs. She requests we all endeavor to learn from one another as we enrich and enlarge our gardening horizons. Veronica also supports the Wildscape sign at TGC headquarters.