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Updated Message from The Garden Club of New Jersey, Inc. addressing the Coronavirus Pandemic

July 15, 2020 By GCNJ

Dear GCNJ Members: Due to the devastating COVID-19 global pandemic, we want to list the following cancelations and reassure our club members that we are united in our commitment to providing education, resources and opportunities for adults and youth for all our citizens to expand the love of gardening and floral design and encourage participation in civic, environmental and historic preservation projects to protect the past for the future. United, we will weather this calamity that has gripped the world, follow strict measures of safe distancing so that we can get back to the new normal as soon as safely possible. Our government’s restrictions are everchanging as they seek to quell the spread of this horrific virus, so we will be canceling or holding virtual Zoom meetings, workshops, schools and conferences. The following is the current schedule as of July, 2020:
  1. All meetings to have been held at Holly House, GCNJ Headquarters, Rutgers Gardens for the rest of the calendar year of 2020 and until further notice, will be held via Zoom meetings from the safety of our homes.
  2. Flower Show School, Course IV to be held September 16th & 17th, 2020 at Holly House has been canceled. Both FSS Courses III & IV will be rescheduled in future.
  3. NGC’s Fall Board Meeting to be held in Fargo, North Dakota on September 24th, and 25th has been canceled.
  4. GCNJ District Meetings will be rescheduled via Zoom meetings TBA.
  5. District Flower Shows scheduled for September, 2020 have been postponed, details to follow.
  6. Garden Study School to be held at Holly House on October 6th, 7th & 8th, 2020 will be held via Virtual Zoom with details to follow.
  7. Judges Council Meetings will be held via Zoom meetings, details to follow.
  8. Flower Show Symposium to be held at the Holiday Inn in East Windsor on October 14th , 15th and 16th has been postponed until the Fall of 2021.
  9. Central Atlantic Region-SGC Conference at Dover Downs, Delaware scheduled for October 19th, and 20th has been canceled.
  10. The Garden Club of New Jersey’s Fall Conference and Presidents Day at the Bridgewater Marriott to be held at the Bridgewater Marriott has been canceled and a Virtual Zoom Meeting will take place in late Fall, details to follow.
Please know that we are working hard to provide upcoming workshops so our member clubs feel comfortable conducting Virtual meetings and our Speakers List has been updated to include Speakers who have adapted to the new normal and are able to present Virtual workshops from the safety of our homes. Our new website will be continually updated to give the latest information on a wide range of gardening topics. We will be working to advocate for important environmental legislation under the Environment with current updates on key environmental legislation posted by our Environmental Chair, Beverly Kazickas. Beverly will provide instructions on reaching out to your local legislator/s on legislation that has lasting implications for our pollinators, wildlife, our health and wellbeing for us and for future generations. Happy Gardening! Jeannie Geremia, GCNJ President

tova’s design experiments

April 14, 2020 By GCNJ

Blog-39-—-Winter-Palace- Blog-40-—-Creme-de-la-Creme-reduced-1 Blog-41-—-Bronze-Age-reduced-1 Blog-42-Vertigo-reduced-1 Blog-43-Pandoras-Box-reduced-1 Blog-44-mother-of-pearl-reduced-1 Blog-45-Aquarium-reduced-1 Blog-46-Mood-Indigo-reduced-1 Blog-47-Jambalaya-reduced

GCNJ Membership Dues

March 14, 2020 By GCNJ

As the interim membership chair, I wanted to let you know that GCNJ has changed the way they keep their membership information. The new procedures are in a viewable PDF HERE. For a downloadable, writable document, that you can fill in, CLICK HERE. Please fill it out and then email it back to me. The first sheet can be mailed with your dues check. Any questions, please do not hesitate to call or email me. Ellen Preissler GCNJ Membership Chair

tova’s florambunctious blog

February 14, 2020 By GCNJ

tova's florambunctious blog tova's florambunctious flower design Here’s the backstory: In 2016, I joined the Montclair Garden Club in order to polish my gardening skills. To my total surprise, I was introduced to the world of flower design — which was like falling into Wonderland.  Almost immediately, I found myself leaning toward the new Botanical Exploration category (even before it existed!), and things have been evolving ever since. You can sample or binge-view dozens of my blogs listed below.  Each one tells the story of a different design experiment — from the first idea to the final photo.  And you are more than welcometo send comments, feedback, and stories/photos of your own botanical adventures to: florambunctious@aol.com

    My Blogs:

  • Blog-39: Winter Palace
  • Blog-40: Creme de la Creme
  • Blog-41: Bronze Age
  • Blog-42: Vertigo
  • Blog-43: Pandora's Box
  • Blog-44: Mother of pearl
  • Blog-45-Aquarium-reduced-1
  • Blog-46: Mood Indigo
  • Blog-47: Jambalaya

President’s Message – 2019

April 15, 2019 By GCNJ

Jeannie Geremia
Jeannie Geremia

2019-2021 GCNJ President, Jeannie Geremia

My President’s Theme “Paths to Discovery through Outdoor Learning Centers”

Please accept my heartfelt thanks in bestowing this great honor of serving you as the 49thGarden Club of New Jersey President. I will do my utmost to follow in my illustrious predecessors’ footsteps over the past 94 years, to galvanize our member clubs throughout this great state of New Jersey. First, I’d like to tell you a little bit about my background as I am a Jersey Girl with ancestors on both sides of my family, who arrived in New Jersey in the 1600’s settling in Monmouth County, and later moving west to Hunterdon and Somerset Counties. My family obviously fell in love with this great state of ours because most of them never left. I am a proud farmer’s daughter, and the love of Nature figured into my early childhood as I was tasked at age 7 in watching our 60+ cows in different unfenced fields and pastures. That little girl still resonates in my soul as I spent countless hours frolicking among the wildflowers, birds, butterflies & bees. That really is what motivates me to this day as I want to share the exquisite beauty and joy I felt and pass it on to our future generations. The remarkable thing is that, while my kids were saddled with a mother who insisted on giving their friends garden tours whenever they ventured to our house, and gardened until dark with my children impatient for dinner, I vowed that I was not a club joiner. Yes, I became a Girl Scout Leader and took my troop to Bowman’s Hill time and again as I had to share the beauty of wildflowers, birds and butterflies with the girls, but it wasn’t until my persistent Aunt Sam finally coaxed me to join her garden club that I relented, and joined a club—-the Neshanic Garden Club. Who knew that this was my destiny and you might say I was a late bloomer in finally making this discovery. My need to share about Nature was apparent at the outset as I was already smitten with Hellebores, not well known in the early 2000’s. Attending District meetings, I just couldn’t keep to my Neshanic Garden Club’s report alone, I had photos and articles on Hellebores and enthusiastically regaled the attendees about their attributes. That got Onnolee Allieri’s attention, unbeknownst to me, and the next thing I know, as I’m ending my Neshanic Garden Club Presidency, I became The Garden Club of New Jersey Horticulture Chair. About this time, I become enthralled with caterpillars I found on rue plants at Neshanic Garden Club’s annual plant sale. Another love affair with Nature began, and the need to share and protect these creatures (my husband calls them Jeannie’s babies) with their penchant for chomping on parsley, fennel and dill, I realized that I had a big job to do to educate my fellow gardeners and the public as you can’t have butterflies if you destroy their caterpillars. All you had to do was grow more of caterpillar host plants and SHARE. My next step was to help protect butterflies by investing time to get the Black Swallowtail Designated as New Jersey’s official State Butterfly. This was not an easy task but the lesson is you can do anything you set your mind to, just go for it, and give it your all. Everyone has the innate ability and I am so proud of the initiative, talent and dedication so many people have done for the environment, for our pollinators, for our health and wellbeing. We have such a proud history! The GCNJ has had 3 past GCNJ members become National Garden Clubs, Inc. Presidents, and we are poised to be honored with a 4thas our own Mary Warshauer, GCNJ President 2009-2011 is currently NGC 1stVice President and will be sworn in as NGC President in May, 2021 at the National Garden Club Convention to be held in East Rutherford at the Meadowlands Hilton. Pat Wilson, Rake & Hoe GC President is 2021 NGC Convention Chair, and with that in mind, we have several projects to energize our clubs with. First and foremost are the projects we are planning in partnership with Rutgers Gardens. Bruce Crawford, Director of Rutgers Gardens has long regaled us with his vision of creating a living history of plants and their complimentary wildlife counterparts that came into existence and interacted with one another in the same timeframe. We had already produced the 3rdvolume of GCNJ History entitled “The Green Crusade Continues” bringing the original history up to date as of 2010. Viewing this history prompted us to take on the task of refurbishing several past GCNJ/Rutgers Gardens Projects from Ruth Paul’s Native Plant & Regional Garden, to Wini Applegate’s Pollinator Gardens, to Carole Iuso’s Freedom Trail of Great Americans & Field of Heroes to Onnolee Allieri’s Helen Hull’s Native Plant List. Eureka! A tour of Franklin Conservatory & Botanical Gardens new 2 acre children’s garden in Columbus, Ohio impressed me with the desire to incorporate some of these ideas into our exhibits at Rutgers Gardens. Hence, Paths to Discovery through Outdoor Learning Centers, a dynamic project that clubs can take any part of back to your own communities and parks. Bruce’s dream and ours coalesced as we will have sculptures of a Bird, a Butterfly, a Bee, a Dragonfly, an Ant, Bats, turtles, frogs, and each with their own library and signage. All our District Meetings will be held at Holly House so you can experience these projects. We will introduce these projects and more, plus Flower Show workshops to be held beginning this September as we plan to stage 4 District Flower Shows in 2020 to help replace our annual GCNJ State Flower Show having been discontinued. Please plan on attending the fabulous GCNJ Fall Conference to be held on Monday, November 4th, 2019 at the Bridgewater Marriott with NGC President Gay Austin as our special guest and Angie Raitano and Diane Hughes, Designers extraordinaire doing a fabulous design program “Christmas on Broadway”. You’re all invited as we feature our GCNJ history in a video that will be available on our website and Bruce Crawford and our GCNJ Committee showcasing our Rutgers Projects and much, much more!!! In closing, I’d like to introduce my family—daughter, Nancy, son, Joe, daughter-in-law Sunny, Aunt Sam, my rock—my husband, Bob. Also my honored guests: My angel, Ed Danberry, my Gardener News editor Tom Castronovo, my Parker Home dear friend, Lee Shahay and partner in creating Learning Centers, Bruce Crawford. My special gratitude goes out to my garden club, Neshanic, and Jane Smith for the fabulous flowers and arrangements. To all of you, my garden club friends, I give you two years of unstinting dedication to you and my love. Together we will make New Jersey BLOOM!!!! Your gardening friend, Jeannie Geremia Garden Club of New Jersey President

The Garden Club of New Jersey HQ

Garden Club of NJ Headquarters
Holly House – Rutgers University
126 Log Cabin Road
East Brunswick, NJ
Directions

Holly House Mailing Address:
126 Ryder’s Lane
East Brunswick, NJ 08816-1331
Office Telephone: (732) 249-0947
FAX: (732) 249-0947

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The EMBLEM of The Garden Club of New Jersey may not be used or copied in any way; by any club, individual, or for any purpose other than official application by the Executive Board of GCNJ. The EMBLEM of The Garden Club of New Jersey shall be used only on awards, publications, programs, etc. authorized by the Executive Board of GCNJ.

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