Horticultural and Floral Design Judge Heather Gray will explore the different types of Special Exhibits specified in typical Flower Show Schedules, and share tips for creating these combining both horticultural and design elements.  Many of tonight's examples make wonderful additions to indoor and outdoor spaces at home, so this presentation is appropriate for anyone. That said, we do hope to encourage more members to enter special exhibits in our 2025 flower shows!

Heather Gray is an enthusiastic Richmond Hill gardener who belongs to seven garden clubs, is an accredited Horticultural Judge and Floral Design Judge, and who enjoys organizing and participating in flower shows, as well as sharing her considerable horticultural and design knowledge via workshops.

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Tonight's guest speaker is a resident of Richmond Hill and will be participating in-person.

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One lucky in-person attendee of tonight's event will take home one of the speaker's example designs (must be present to win). 

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Gardening Fitness: Shortly after 7 pm,  Dave McCullogh, a personal trainer and fitness specialist, will provide in-person attendees with a brief exercise regime to assist us in getting fit for the gardening season.

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Members: Instructions for participation in this virtual and in-person event will be emailed to members twice - once on the Friday prior to the meeting, and again on Monday. Instructions are also available by logging into our site and checking the "members-only" version of this event. 

Visitors: Guests are welcome to participate in this virtual and in-person event at a nominal fee of $5.00. Instructions for participation will be emailed to non-society members who complete the registration process prior to the event start time.

About In-Person Attendance at the McConaghy Centre: 

• Doors to the auditorium open at 7:00 pm 
• The meeting begins promptly at 7:30 pm 
• Please bring a mug or cup if you would like hot coffee or tea
• Masks are not required, but are encouraged

For more information about this fundraiser,
please visit our Plant Sale page.

As a part of the Richmond Hill Blooms activities for 2025 our Horticultural Society is participating in an in-person kick-off event on the evening of May 14.

This free workshop will feature a presentation by gardening guru Sean James.

Representatives of our society will be hosting a plant sale this evening.

Click the below link for more information and to register for this event, hosted by the City of Richmond Hill.  

Richmond Hill Blooms 

Look for our booth at this event celebrating Richmond Hill, and hosted by Deputy Mayor Godwin Chan.

More info.

Rock Garden at the Royal Botanical Gardens – In the morning, enjoy a guided tour of the 6 acre Rock Garden, built in a former quarry. It showcases 1670 types and 112,543 individual plants as well as water features.

Lunch at the RBG – We will enjoy a modified tea lunch featuring 4 tea sandwiches, salad and a scone in a private dining room.

Hendrie Park at the RBG – There is lots of time to shop at the gift shop and enjoy their indoor cacti and succulent collection and the Mediterranean Garden.  Or you can venture outdoors and explore the prehistoric grove, scented garden, healing garden or the rose garden featuring sculptures and perennials.

Northland Nursery – Here’s your chance to find bargains and hidden gems.  This family-run nursery features one price for every plant including trees, shrubs, hellebores and other perennials, roses, and peonies. In 2024, it was $9.99 for each 1 gallon pot.  This is a good opportunity to try a plant for difficult areas or one that pushes the zone.

Tickets are $99 per member and $109 for non-member guests 

Purchase by clicking the Register button or in-person at a General Meeting. Deadline to purchase tickets is May 11th.  Participation is not confirmed until payment is received.  Tickets are non-refundable unless the bus trip is cancelled by the Richmond Hill Garden & Horticultural Society or due to extenuating circumstances.

Ticket price includes: Transportation, entry fee and guided tour, lunch, all taxes and tips. 

Bus departure and Return: Our air-conditioned luxury coach with on-board washroom departs at 8:15 am from the Elgin West Community Centre at 11099 Bathurst Street in Richmond Hill, with an approximate return time of 5:30-6:00 pm.  A Bus Waiver form must be signed to board the bus.

Questions:  Contact Roberta Jennings at 416-239-3855 rjennings63@outlook.com

Tonight, wildscaping guru Tony Spencer, a.k.a., The New Perennialist, will share ideas to link our homes and landscapes in a symbiotic loop that stimulates garden-spaces adaptable to the inevitable extremes of our changing climate. Leveraging plant-driven landscape design, he hopes to inspire us to create and sustain dynamic garden spaces to rekindle our relationship to the natural world. And, Tony will have plenty of stories and photos to share from his extensive countryside gardens, where he is conducting a series of open experiments to combine naturalistic planting design with green infrastructure for a fluid ecological art form.

Tony Spencer is the Canadian writer, digital creator and planting designer behind The New Perennialist. He is recognized and published internationally in the world of naturalistic garden design. Known for his award-winning blog, he also hosts The New Perennialist Talks, a webinar series featuring influential design innovators in the genre. In 2024, Tony won his second top Landscape Design Award of Excellence from the US-based Perennial Plant Association (PPA) and in 2023, he was named PPA Garden Media Promoter of the year. He is also winner of the 2024 Media Awards Silver Laurel Medal of Achievement for Social Media presented by GardenComm: Garden Communicators International. Day to day, Tony is a puckish ringleader for the naturalistic movement with over 85,000 followers on his various social media channels. He travels extensively to gardens and symposiums in his primary role as a communicator, documenter and sharer of ideas for this movement.  

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Tonight's guest speaker is planning to attend the meeting in-person. Should inclement weather prevent him from traveling to Richmond Hill, a live video broadcast of his remote participation will be projected onto a large screen in the auditorium.

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First Flower Show of 2025

In-person meeting attendees are invited to enjoy the Spring Flower Show following tonight's guest speaker presentation.
Please consider exhibiting specimens from your own garden (More info.). Entries need to arrive by 6:15 pm and new participants should contact our Flower Show Director for support and an exhibitor number.



Members: Instructions for participation in this virtual and in-person event will be emailed to members twice - once on the Friday prior to the meeting, and again on Monday. Instructions are also available by logging into our site and checking the "members-only" version of this event. 

Visitors: Guests are welcome to participate in this virtual and in-person event at a nominal fee of $5.00. Instructions for participation will be emailed to non-society members who complete the registration process prior to the event start time.

About In-Person Attendance at the McConaghy Centre: 

• Doors to the auditorium open at 7:00 pm 
• The meeting begins promptly at 7:30 pm 
• Please bring a mug or cup if you would like hot coffee or tea
• Masks are not required, but are encouraged

Tonight's speaker asserts that gardeners and farmers are optimists, as they plant and tend their land, hoping for the right temperatures at the right time, sufficient rainfall, less destructive storms, manageable pests, good soil, and some luck to give a successful, beautiful, and healthy garden or high crop yields. Unfortunately, while the soil can be locally amended, the weather and climate elements and their impacts are less flexible. Adding to risks, climate change and a growing number and intensity of extreme weather events are predicted to continue to increase challenges for gardeners.
That said, there are practices available that can help to reduce the weather and climate risks for gardens, homes and communities. There also are some potential opportunities to add new species in the garden, as well as gardening strategies to help reduce the greenhouse gases that are feeding climate change. This presentation will highlight the changing extreme weather events in our region and some weather and climate-smart practices to reduce the risks, including other “win-win” sustainable gardening strategies to support biological diversity, pollinators, and protect the environment for the next generations.

Heather Auld is a meteorologist, climatologist and an avid Richmond Hill gardener. Her professional career spans more than 45 years and three retirements. This includes 32 years as a Federal Government weather forecaster and climatologist in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Canadian Forces Trenton and for NORAD, and more than 13 years in the private sector as a consultant. She has developed extreme weather and climate design values for the National Building Code of Canada and other infrastructure standards, has led the development of extreme weather guidance for municipal emergency management across Canada and provided expert testimony to many provincial and national disaster investigations. Heather has been invited to serve on various international expert teams and delegations, including the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, World Meteorological Organization, U.N. Strategy for Disaster Reduction; and she has served on various Canadian delegations to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity.
Heather and her husband, Dave McCulloch, also a meteorologist, endeavor to implement weather and climate smart gardening practices in their garden, considered a popular, "must visit" stop on local Garden Tours.  

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Tonight's guest speaker is a resident of Richmond Hill and will be participating in-person.

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Members: Instructions for participation in this virtual and in-person event will be emailed to members twice - once on the Friday prior to the meeting, and again on Monday. Instructions are also available by logging into our site and checking the "members-only" version of this event. 

Visitors: Guests are welcome to participate in this virtual and in-person event at a nominal fee of $5.00 Instructions for participation will be emailed to non-society members who complete the registration process prior to the event start time.

About In-Person Attendance at the McConaghy Centre: 

• Doors to the auditorium open at 7:00 pm 
• The meeting begins promptly at 7:30 pm 
• Please bring a mug or cup if you would like hot coffee or tea
• All attendees are encouraged to register online for inclusion in door prize draws
• Masks are not required, but are encouraged

Late summer is a great time to learn how to preserve the bounty produced from our gardens. Tonight's speaker will cover techniques such as dehydrating, freezing, preserving and canning; and will share some recipes that can be applied to our own harvested edibles.

If you were ever to experience a food shortage, Karen Hollingshead would be the perfect next door neighbor. With the help of her dehydrator, steam juicer, canners, freeze dryer and vacuum sealer, her densely planted 800-square-foot garden feeds not only herself and her husband Steve, but also both sets of parents.
Karen's fascination with gardening and preserving was sparked by childhood visits to her Danish grandparents' home in North Toronto where she enthusiastically helped with all of the annual preserving rituals. A past-president of the Bolton and District Horticultural Society, Karen is passionate about sharing the many valuable skill-sets of self-reliance that are quickly being forgotten. For more homesteading hints, Karen invites you to follow her on Instagram @hilltop.hygge.homestead.  

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Tonight's guest speaker is planning to attend the meeting in-person. Should inclement weather prevent her from traveling to Richmond Hill, a live video broadcast of her remote participation will be projected onto a large screen in the auditorium.

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Second Flower Show of 2025

In-person meeting attendees are invited to enjoy the Summer and Rose Flower Show following tonight's guest speaker presentation.
Please consider exhibiting specimens from your own garden (More info.). Entries need to arrive by 6:15 pm and new participants should contact our Flower Show Director for support and an exhibitor number.

Members: Instructions for participation in this virtual and in-person event will be emailed to members twice - once on the Friday prior to the meeting, and again on Monday. Instructions are also available by logging into our site and checking the "members-only" version of this event. 

Visitors: Guests are welcome to participate in this virtual and in-person event at a nominal fee of $5.00. Instructions for participation will be emailed to non-society members who complete the registration process prior to the event start time.

About In-Person Attendance at the McConaghy Centre: 

• Doors to the auditorium open at 7:00 pm 
• The meeting begins promptly at 7:30 pm
• Please bring a mug or cup if you would like hot coffee or tea
• Masks are not required, but are encouraged

Invasive plants are considered by many to be a threat to biodiversity, human health, and our economy. And, they threaten native plants, insects, animals, and our forests. So why are they sold in nurseries? Tonight’s speaker says that the Master Gardeners of Ontario receive so many questions on this subject that they decided to investigate. After months of research, Claudette Sims has some surprising answers to share with us. But more importantly, she has suggestions for moving forward.

Claudette Sims joined the Master Gardeners of Ontario in 2004 and served as President for six years. She was a regular panelist and lead on the weekly CBC radio online garden chat for many years and also subbed in for Ed Lawrence on the radio, which she says was a thrilling but scary experience. Claudette is currently Administrator for the very successful Master Gardeners of Ontario Facebook Group which is nearing 58,000 members, featuring a great team of Master Gardeners who provide gardening advice for the public.  Along with Cathy Kavassalis, Claudette is working to further the work of the Canadian Coalition for Invasive Plant Regulation (CCIPR) to stop the sale of high-risk invasive plants that harm biodiversity. Claudette's most recent passion continues to be adding larval host plants for butterflies and specific native plants for specialist bees.  

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Tonight's guest speaker is planning to attend the meeting remotely, via Zoom.  A live video broadcast of her remote participation will be projected onto a large screen in the auditorium.



Members: Instructions for participation in this virtual and in-person event will be emailed to members twice - once on the Friday prior to the meeting, and again on Monday. Instructions are also available by logging into our site and checking the "members-only" version of this event. 

Visitors: Guests are welcome to participate in this virtual and in-person event at a nominal fee of $5.00. Instructions for participation will be emailed to non-society members who complete the registration process prior to the event start time.

About In-Person Attendance at the McConaghy Centre: 

• Doors to the auditorium open at 7:00 pm 
• The meeting begins promptly at 7:30 pm
• Please bring a mug or cup if you would like hot coffee or tea
• Masks are not required, but are encouraged

Tonight's speaker invites us to dive into the enchanting world of indoor flowering plants. Her presentation will focus on orchids and other stunning bloomers. We will gain insights into their care, blooming cycles, and tips for creating our own flourishing indoor gardens filled with color and fragrance.

Kiki Alwan is a traveling floral and horticultural designer, specializing in creating living green walls, terrariums, and dish gardens. She enjoys teaching people how to care for their tropical plants and guiding them in creating their own unique bouquets and arrangements.  

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Tonight's guest speaker is planning to attend the meeting in-person. Should inclement weather prevent her from traveling to Richmond Hill, a live video broadcast of her remote participation will be projected onto a large screen in the auditorium.



Final Flower Show of 2025

In-person meeting attendees are invited to enjoy the Autumn and Harvest Flower Show following tonight's guest speaker presentation.
Please consider exhibiting specimens from your own garden (More info.). Entries need to arrive by 6:15 pm and new participants should contact our Flower Show Director for support and an exhibitor number.



Members: Instructions for participation in this virtual and in-person event will be emailed to members twice - once on the Friday prior to the meeting, and again on Monday. Instructions are also available by logging into our site and checking the "members-only" version of this event. 

Visitors: Guests are welcome to participate in this virtual and in-person event at a nominal fee of $5.00. Instructions for participation will be emailed to non-society members who complete the registration process prior to the event start time.

About In-Person Attendance at the McConaghy Centre: 

• Doors to the auditorium open at 7:00 pm 
• The meeting begins promptly at 7:30 pm 
• Please bring a mug or cup if you would like hot coffee or tea
• Masks are not required, but are encouraged