Learn all about bouquets at next ‘Work to Learn’ event

By Sequim Gazette Staff • September 25, 2024 1:30 am
Photo by Leslie A. Wright Check out the Beep Beep dahlia and more at the Sequim Botanical Terrace Garden, which hosts a “Work to Learn” party on Sept. 28.
Photo by Leslie A. Wright Check out the Beep Beep dahlia and more at the Sequim Botanical Terrace Garden, which hosts a “Work to Learn” party on Sept. 28.

Join a pair of gardening gurus for some advice on garden bouquets at the next “Work to Learn” party, starting at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 28, at the Sequim Botanical Terrace Garden, 500 N. Blake Ave.

Mary Crook and Gail Ditmore will demonstrate how to make attractive flower arrangements. Bring clippers to use the Terrace Garden dahlias and roses as the core of cut flower bouquets.

Bring a vase, flowers and/or foliage to share from one’s garden. Extra foliage, water, and clippers will be provided.

A big box or bucket would help to carry bouquets home safely.

Afterward, learn to identify and deadhead (cut off) the past-peak blooms in the Terrace Garden.

Crook has been a volunteer with the Sequim Botanical Garden Society for more than five years. She has her own home garden and is Garden Manager of the Terrace Garden.

She learned gardening from her parents. Inheriting some of her mother’s Japanese flower arranging vases, and loving color and the variety of textures in the flowers in her own yard, she enjoys bringing them together as both fresh and dried arrangements.

Ditmore has owned a flower shop in the Tacoma area and has designed flower bouquets professionally for the last 30 years. A volunteer at the Terrace Garden, she now has retired to sunny Sequim — though she said she never retired from the beauty of flowers and the fun of arranging them.

“Work to Learn” parties are opportunities for novices and seasoned gardeners alike to volunteer together to cultivate what makes the community distinctive and flourishing. Attendees do not have to get in the dirt to learn, but if those who want to help are asked to bring gardening gloves, tools, sunscreen and hats. Enter the parking lot at East Fir Street and Blake Avenue, park there, walk across the footbridge to the terrace gardens, and continue straight along the central path to the first staircase.

The Sequim Botanical Garden Society is a volunteer partner with the City of Sequim and a 501(c)3 nonprofit that provides information and a demonstration of what can be done in home gardening with research-based horticultural practices.

For more information, contact Dona Brock at BROCKDL88@gmail.com or 360-460-8865, or visit fb.me/SequimBotanicalGarden and SequimBotanicalGarden.org.