Upcoming Events

September: elephant ear & anemone, honeysuckle & crape myrtle, coleus, moonflower, sedums

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THANK YOU, CAPERS, for coming out in droves to support our annual Plant Sale fundraiser — We are so grateful for your support!!!   

We always accept empty plant pots, red solo cups, and *plastic* venetian mini-blinds to cut up for plant tags for use in our plant sale.  Please drop either anytime in the driveway at 1121 River Bay Road.  Thanks for helping us to reduce and reuse!

Tuesday, October 6th at 5:30pm:  Seed & Cutting Exchange, Cape location TBD.
(Rain date Weds Oct 7th.)
Bring your extra seeds (columbine, moneyplant, coneflower, moonflower, hyacinth bean vine, four o’clocks, etc.) and extra cuttings (coleus, bloodleaf, wandering dude, Moses in a basket, sweet potato vines. basil, etc.) to share with fellow Members.  Please bring ziplocs, envelopes, and/or tea bag wrappers to take home a whole new selection of seeds and cuttings — all are welcome!

Sunday, October 18th at 5:30pm: Annual Harvest Dinner (Rain date Sunday Oct 25).
Members will gather at Cape main beach for our annual celebration of a successful harvest and another splendid season gardening together.  Outdoor event following social-distancing guidelines with catered meals.

[All meetings are usually held in the Cape St. Claire Clubhouse meeting room (1223 River Bay Road, 21409) unless otherwise noted.  Questions?  Phone Catherine at 410-212-1944 or salca01@comcast.net, or reach us at capegardenclub@gmail.com.  New faces always welcome!]

Read more about our year’s events and speakers.

Sept 2020 Members’ Sharing Slideshow

COVID or no COVID, we Garden Club Members have gotta have our gardening chit-chat!  So 6 of us gathered in person outdoors in a screened porch, observing social distancing while viewing the slides and enjoying refreshments, and 14 more joined in over Zoom.  As usual, it was an evening of fun and fellowship, laughing about our plant addictions, and sharing the triumphs and setbacks of another season in our gardens.

See the entire slideshow here:  Members’ Sharing Slideshow 2020

And a short supplemental slideshow by Member Catherine here:  The Year of the Fungus in the_Salam garden

We were also happy to report that despite COVID, 43 of our 50 Members found a way to contribute to our plant sale.  Even some who had to stay home potted plants at home, or helped deliver much-needed supplies like potting soil and tables.  One of our Members, battling cancer, still managed to contribute several flats of plants.  What a rocking group of devoted volunteers!  And we are glad to present to every one of our 2020 Plant Sale volunteers these personalized insulated tumblers.  Congratulations, Members, and thanks to all for your contributions to our Club!

 

2020 Secret Garden Tours

Staying in groups smaller than 10, and wearing masks when we came close to one another, we still hosted our annual Secret Garden Tours at 3 award-winning gardens right here in the Cape.  Such perfect weather, cool and bright, for our tours this June.  Such beautiful plant combinations, such charming garden sheds, such oases of calm these stunning gardens afforded us.  Thanks to all who participated, and thanks to our hosts for allowing us to visit!

Hydrangeas & forest grass

Mophead and Oakleaf hydrangeas side by side

A shed to brag about, with a working waterwheel!

Such perfect weather this year!

Bay-wise certified, daylilies, hostas, & hydrangeas

Asiatic lilies, daylilies, Loropetalum

Fragrant honeysuckle, hydrangeas

Hydrangea, giant leaves of butterbur

Milkweed & Oakleaf Hydrangea

2020 Virtual Plant Sale

Read a review in Around Broadneck here.

When COVID hit in March, we knew we couldn’t leave our quarantined Cape neighbors without spring flowers and vegetables this year, not on top of everything else!  Barred from hosting an event at our normal Clubhouse field site, we quickly came up with a new plan.  We potted plants all of April per our usual timeline, at potting parties and Members potting at home, and our Club’s tech guru built an online ordering site using Shopify.

Working as a team, we had a smashing success of a plant sale at one of our Member’s driveways, with curbside pickup for our customers.  Many thanks to all the Members who schlepped in potting soil, who donated and potted plants at our potting parties, who potted from home, who built the virtual sale site and provided tech support, who dropped off ladders, crates, and shelving to build space for all the plants, who helped place plant orders, who helped unload them safely upon delivery, who picked up refreshments, showed up to work a shift, who delivered plants to those customers wanting delivery, who stayed late to store tender plants under tarps and in the garage in our unseasonably cool spring, who stayed to help cleanup all the tables and and shelves and ladders afterward.  Thanks to our neighbors who let us put tables on their grass, who dug and donated plants for our sale, who came out in record numbers to purchase and curbside pickup their new plants, who took the time to appreciate our efforts.  Thanks to local businesses Blue Rooster, Cape Dunkin’ Donuts, Graul’s, and Trader Joes Annapolis, who generously donated refreshments for our volunteers.  What a fantastic team effort!  And our customers noticed!  Here’s what they had to say:

• “Awesome job! Thanks for doing all this.”
• “We walked by earlier. You all are doing amazing. Thank you!!!”
• “Thanks just picked my stuff up. Looks great. Wish I would have ordered more!”
• “Effortless pickup, the whole thing was so well done. Thank you. Can’t wait for warmer weather to get these guys in the ground!”
• “I’m new to the community, so this was my first experience, but y’all knocked it out of the park! Congratulations on all the hard work that was put into this.”
• A glowing review in Around Broadneck here.

Plant Sale Leftovers now available

Thank you, neighbors, for supporting our sale so enthusiastically and picking up your orders last weekend!

We loved seeing you all smiling with anticipation as you took home your plants!
For those who missed it or want more, we do have lots of varieties available — please visit us to see what’s left, no need to pre-order.
This week: Weds 3-6pm, Thurs 12-6pm, Friday 12-6pm. We take cash or paypal.
If you’re interested, please email capegardenclub@gmail.com for the location address. Thanks, neighbors!

Some of the fantastic plants we still have available: blue lobelia, solomon’s seal, black eyed susan, sensitive fern, spiderwort, lily of the valley, hosta, milkweeds, chrysanthemum, bearded iris, cherry tomatoes, and comfrey

2020 Plant Sale is OPEN!

Our 2020 PLANT SALE is OPEN!
ORDER NOW

Ordering site will remain open to all through May 6, followed by curbside order pickups from a Cape residence May 8-11.  Leftovers sale in Cape May 12-15.

Email capegardenclub@gmail.com with any questions — thanks for your support!

Some of the fantastic plants we have available on our 2020 Virtual Plant Sale: Vriginia bluebells, lily of the valley, 7 Camellia cultivars, milkweeds, hosta, native columbine, native woodland phlox, and herb & veggie starts of all kinds!

45th Anniversary Dinner

Tulips & cake mark our 45th

Lenten roses accented by paperbush

A feast of stews, salads, and sides

With foliage like this, who needs flowers?

Feasting together

Our founding Member Doris Clair

Our Members gathered together for our annual Anniversary Dinner celebration, bringing a potluck of delicious foods and gorgeous plants together to mark 45 years of gardening fun and fellowship!  We were especially happy to honor our founding Member, Doris Clair.  She and our other founding mothers began the very Garden Club that continues to give us all so much fun learning and growing together.

Happy 45th, Cape Garden Club!

 

Winter Seed-Sowing Workshop

Our Members dodged winter storms and gathered together inside to winter sow seed.  Using translucent food containers, seed starting soil, and a variety of seeds from Sample Seed Company, we made miniature greenhouses.  We also enjoyed painting rocks for our gardens — a fun and cozy way to stick it to old man winter.  And within a month, the first seedlings germinate, outside, in the winter wet  — amazing!

Wreath Workshop 2019

Happy Holidays from the Cape St. Claire Garden Club!

Another year, another wreath workshop!

Members of the Garden Club enjoyed a fun and festive evening together, enjoying delicious hot cider & refreshments while working together to create beautiful wreaths made of fragrant fresh evergreens clipped from our very own gardens.  Combined together into bundles, then pinned onto straw and metal wreath frames, we made them for display right here at the Cape Clubhouse & Guard shack, as well as one for the Broadneck Library.  Two more will be hung at the Statehouse in downtown Annapolis, along with wreaths contributed and made by many other area garden clubs.  We are so happy to help beautify our community for the holidays.  Wishing all our neighbors in Cape and beyond a warm, colorful, fragrant, and festive holiday full of friends and family.

Team Work: Bundling Greens

Affixing to wreath forms of straw and metal

Cape Community Service

Several Members of the Cape St. Claire Garden Club spent a couple hours early last Saturday to help Town Manager Ryan Anderson with his capstone project for his Watershed Steward certification.  Together with our neighbors, we raked up several trailer-loads of fallen leaves from the drainage ditches on Hampton & Chestnut Tree.  While fallen leaves are fabulously nutrient-rich mulches in our garden, great to leave in place for the plants and the wild things, in our drainage ditches they are excessive nutrient loads on our waterways, causing algae blooms and fish kills.  Working together, we can keep these excess nutrients from running into our cherished Chesapeake Bay watershed.  Ryan hopes his project will inspire us all to clean leaves out of all our neighborhood storm water conveyances.  Each person’s effort makes a difference!

Members Pictured: Larry Jennings, Bill Rappaport, Audrey & Larry Lengbeyer.  Not pictured: Becky & Roy Benner, Rose Mary Stocker.