YORKTON - The Saskatchewan Horticultural Association (SHA) recently held their AGM in Weyburn; this convention gives a chance for SHA members from all over the province to gather, talk gardening, and listen to some very interesting horticultural presentations.
Each society in the SHA sends in a report about their group, and I thought you might be interested to read part of our report, and the gardening journey that our group has travelled.
Here goes!
The Yorkton and District Horticultural Society has been in operation for almost 90 years.
The first flower show was held on September 7, 1906 at City Hall in Yorkton, quite an accomplishment for the pioneers of the time!
The early years saw show prizes being a bag of sugar or a bag of coal. Meetings were a full-blown event, with speakers or presentations, and enough lunch provided to feed an army! This was the era when most of the members were farm wives, and they brought hearty lunches that included sandwiches and baking, and since they were free of their farm duties for one evening, they made the most of it, and enjoyed lively visits at the meetings!
We hold monthly meetings from September to November, and then from March to June. We always have a speaker or presentation for the first hour, then our business meeting for the second hour. Our presentations cover a wide variety of topics from container gardening, raised beds, making dyes from plants, flower arranging, heirloom potatoes, and how to start seeds and many other topics that have been enjoyed over the years.
We hold two plant sales a year, in June and September, held in our local mall, with very good response. Our Annual Fruit, Flower and Vegetable show is held in August, also at the mall, and attendance and participation is very good. This is a non-judged show, and we found that we have much better participation among members with this approach.
We have our own website, and it is constantly updated with new material, photos, and upcoming events. We also have a column in our weekly paper; this has been done weekly since 2007, helping to increase horticultural awareness in the community.
We make monetary donations each spring to five care homes and nursing homes in Yorkton so that the residents can buy plants. We also have several members who help weekly with the plants at the solarium in our hospital. We also do a half hour show once a year with our local cable channel, featuring a panel of gardening experts from our group, in a member’s yard, talking about various gardening topics.
We understand that gardening has changed very much over the years, and so has the attitude about attending meetings. With so much information now available online, many would rather search gardening sites on their own to find topics that interest them. But we are striving to change and ‘grow’ with the times, and try to establish new ways of doing things that hopefully will interest and attract new members.”
So as you can see, the group is a lively one, and there is always something interesting happening for our members! The next meeting is our AGM which is for members only, but
if you would like to become a member, circle March 19, 2025 on you calendar: that will be the date of our next general meeting, and we would love to see you!
Till then, let’s meet here each week for tea and talk gardening! Thank you to our friends at YTW for their great work. Visit the hort group at www.yorktonhort.ca and have a great week!
