Our Summer Celebration, hosted by Friends of Linwood Park in Ardmore, PA on Saturday, June 8th, was certainly a cause for celebration! Women in Horticulture is three years old! Over the past three years WinH has hosted so many wonderful events. From professional development opportunities, networking events, garden tours, to happy hours. And our network has grown so much over those three years. What started as two people (Cat Meholic and Rachel Burlington) has now grown to an impressive group of people that spans the public and private green industry and beyond. In 2019 a board was created to help guide the future of WinH and they are busy working to obtain 501(c)(3) status for WinH. The WinH board consists of Cat Meholic (WinH Director), Lucy Dinsmore (Assistant Director), Kate Galer (Program Director), Terry Donahue (Secretary & Treasurer), and Maddie Paule (Marketing Director). Thank you to our board and to everyone else who keeps WinH going! There is so much behind the scenes work that goes into creating each event, newsletter, blog post, and more! Want to get more involved with WinH? Check out our website for a list of volunteer projects that you can help with. There is something there for everyone, some tasks take less than one hour to do!
Now back to the Summer Celebration! We couldn't have asked for better weather. It was a beautiful evening in a beautiful garden or "parken"! Linwood Park provided the perfect setting for our celebration. This is the second year Linwood has hosted our Summer Celebration. You can read about last year's celebration here. We are incredibly lucky to be able to celebrate surrounded by the garden that was bursting with color and texture. It's hard to believe that it used to be a parking lot, but that goes to show you what a some determined gardeners can create. The park is lovingly maintained by the volunteer group, Friends of Linwood Park, who also donated the food and beverages for our event. We were very grateful for the delicious tomato pies, salad, and desserts. Thank you to everyone who brought something to share as well!
The evening started with attendees catching up with friends and colleagues, as well as, meeting new people. After mingling, snacking, and playing lawn games Cat Meholic made some remarks, followed by Kate Galer and Chris Leswing.
Kate served as the President of Friends of Linwood Park for 8 years and her husband Chris is the Director of Building and Planning for Lower Merion Township. They have been involved with the park since it's beginning in 2008 and are still volunteering. They even got married in the park! They gave us a brief history of the park. You can read more about the history here. The park was a former parking lot that was sold to developers. The developers wanted to build houses in the already dense neighborhood. When the neighbors heard this they got together to save the land and, with the help of the Lower Merion Township, the park was created. The hardscaping for the park was designed by two local female landscape architects, Kim Douglas and Sarah Schuh.
Guests were treated to a tour through the park's lush plantings by Chris. He provided interesting antidotes about where plants came from, the garden statuary, and different aspects of the park maintenance. He told the group stories about digging up perennials from houses that were slated for demolition and scavenging interesting architectural features to add as garden accents.
The evening concluded with a raffle. Thank you to Behmerwald Nursery, Chanticleer Garden, Gryphon Cafe, and Green Heron Tools for Women for their donations of raffle items. We raised half of the funds needed to file for 501(c)(3) status for WinH. The donations for the evening added up to $250.01. We are well on our way to our $500 goal! Thank you to all of the attendees who donated to the raffle and congratulations to the winners!
Pictured above are the raffle winners with their prizes!
Happy Summer everyone! We look forward to the continued growth of this amazing group. We hope to see everyone at future Women in Hort events!
Thank you to Hanna von Schlegell for providing us with additional images!