Judging of the one hundred twenty lovely front/side gardens selected by Town representatives has concluded. The identities of the three top-scoring gardens in each of Richmond Hill's six wards have been communicated to the Town. Next, property owners will be contacted and invited to an awards celebration in September. Click here for details.

The judges, who are members of the Richmond Hill Garden & Horticultural Society, reported visiting many beautiful gardens and having delightful conversations with the gardeners. They would like to thank all participants for contributing to the beautification of our Town!

Joanne Witt, of SNAPD, posted fifteen great photos of The Richmond Hill Garden & Horticultural Society's May 9, 2015 Plant Sale at the McConaghy Centre to the June 2015 Edition of SNAPD Richmond Hill.

Click here to view all the photos of our successful event, which featured plants, garden accessories and books. As well, L'Arche Daybreak artists offered hand-crafted plant signs for sale.

At tonight’s General Meeting of the Richmond Hill Garden & Horticultural Society, Past President Nancy Andrews revealed the success of an initiative to obtain the naming rights to a special rose in honour of the Society’s 100th anniversary, in the Town once known as the “Rose Capital” of Canada.

A picture of the acquired rose, named Garden Sunshine, is featured in the Society’s new logo and other society resources, such as the cover of our 2015 Yearbook. Naming rights were acquired from the hybridizer, Brad Jalbert’s Select Roses. The name, Garden Sunshine, along with the Society’s name, will appear on all plant tags associated with sales of this rose in Canada - forever.
 
Garden Sunshine is described by Mr. Jalbert as a very desirable bright yellow, fragrant, modern shrub rose. He notes it to be vigorous, hardy and resistant to black spot, and says it will thrive in both the ground and containers, growing to a height of about two feet, and blooming from spring until frost.

The first few hundred Garden Sunshine plants will be available in spring 2016, sold exclusively through our Society at a to-be-determined price. We will begin accepting pre-orders this summer. 

Members of the Rose Project team, as well as the Society's Board of Directors, are excited about the success of this initiative, and hope that Garden Sunshine will bring sunshine to gardens all across Richmond Hill and beyond!

Mr. Jalbert’s development of Garden Sunshine started eight years ago.  Click here to see a video of Mr. Jalbert explaining the rose hybridization process, and here to visit Brad Jalbert’s Select Roses website.

SNAPD Richmond Hill's Joanne Witt posted twenty-eight great photos of our society's 100th anniversary Holiday Celebration and Awards Banquet, held on December 2nd at the Richmond Hill Country Club. 

Click here to see the photos. 

The inaugural version of our society's new website, launched on May 5, 2014,  earned Honorable Mention in Class 2 of the Ontario Horticultural Association's (OHA's) 2014 Ted Reed Website Competition.

Our society's website is a project in honor of the society's 100th anniversary.

Ted Reed is Past President of the OHA and founder of the OHA website. This annual competition was named in his honor by the OHA Board in 2009 in recognition of his contributions to the OHA's site.

The purpose of the competition is to recognize excellence in the creation of society web sites and to show examples to inspire other societies to improve their sites.

Class 2 covers websites such as ours, hosted externally to the www.gardenontario.org domain.

More information about the competition is available in the Fall 2014 issue of the Trillium. Click here to access current and back-issues of the Trillium. 

This summer, eighteen teams of judges from our society visited 2,089 nominated gardens and expended more than 560 hours considering their merits.

Congratulations to the owners of the 1,730 properties who received a coveted 2014 Front Garden Recognition sign! 

For more information about the Front Garden Recognition program, click here.

Our society sent several delegates to the 2014 Ontario Horticultural Association (OHA) Convention that took place in Cornwall, Ontario on July 18 to 20. Winning awards in any annual OHA competition is worth celebrating, as there are more than 280 societies in this province, with more than 28,000 members.

This year, we won first place in the Publication category for Flyers, for our 2014 membership flyer.

As well, one of our Youth members participated in the Convention Flower Show, and won first, second and third place prizes for his entries, as well as Best in Show!

More information is available in our September-October issue of The Garden Post. Members, click here to login to our Members-Only site and access current and back-issues of The Garden Post.

Details of all Convention activities are available to the public in the Fall issue of the Trillium, the OHA's quarterly news publication. Click here to access current and back-issues of the Trillium.

Member of Parliament Costas Menegakis recently saluted the Richmond Hill Garden & Horticultural Society's 100th anniversary in the House of Commons.

Click here for video. 

The Richmond Hill Garden & Horticultural Society received the following publication awards at the Ontario Horticultural Association District 15 Annual General Meeting on April 26th at the Nobleton Lakes Golf Club:

First Place - Yearbook

Third Place - Brochure 

The flower baskets and barrels that line the streets of Richmond Hill each year are planted by members of our society, in conjunction with the Town and Richvale Nurseries.

This year's containers were planted by 54 of our society members between April 8th and April 24th. We planted 460 barrels, 450 baskets, 30 window boxes and 200 pots of wave petunias!

Participants returned to Richvale Nurseries on May 15th for a tour of the greenhouses and the opportunity to see the many container plants beginning to bloom. 

SNAPD Richmond Hill posted a great photo of some of this year's participants on the cover of their May 2014 print newspaper. This and other online images can be viewed by clicking here.