March in the Park: Garden Club of Cape Coral to host sixth annual show at Jaycee Park Saturday
Perhaps everything you ever wanted to know about plants and gardening is available to share and be shared Saturday at the sixth annual March in the Park event in Cape Coral’s riverfront Jaycee Park.
The event, which runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., is the major fundraiser of the year for the host Garden Club of Cape Coral. Parking and admission is free. The club started March in the Park with the idea of providing scholarship money for high school seniors interested in horticultural studies. The club provided four area seniors with scholarships last year and hopes to hand out five this year.
It’s a full day of activities for kids and adults interested in learning more about gardens, resolving problems with gardens, and all kinds of plants available. Plants will be available for sale, too, including palms, shrubs, fruit trees, natives, flowering butterfly plants and herbs. Garden art, including hand- made baskets, glass garden reflectors, hand painted pots, tire planters and miniature fairy garden items, can be viewed and purchased.
“We hope it is well attended,” said Garden Club president Ginny Huffer. “Looks like we will have good weather so that will help. A lot of people don’t know we exist. We are trying to get the word out about what we do, too.”
More than 60 vendors, from area nurseries to individuals, will be showing their wares including more than 500 plants. Food will be available along with music, prize giveaways, informative guest speakers and demonstrations.
Guest speakers include Terry Pink, president of Garden Club of Lehigh, Babu Mathew of the Cape Coral club talking on attracting butterflies, master gardener Mary Ann Parsons talking on the right plant in the right place. Cape club member Ann Sherwood-Palmer will share ways to multiply your yard and Trafalgar Middle School eighth-grader Alice Febela will share growing vegetables like she and her fellow students do in a soccer field size garden at the school.
Master gardeners will be available all day to answer questions and the Garden Club of Cape Coral will have a membership table at the event.
“We have almost 80 members now,” said Huffer. “We’ve been growing in membership for the last two years.”
Prizes to be given away throughout the day include the top prize of a rain barrel hand painted by Vicki Taylor, an artist member of the club. Prize tickets are available for $1 or six for $5. Other top prizes include drawings for a Home Depot cart with plants and garden materials; Home Depot maxi gas grill; two tickets to Royal Palm Dinner Theater; a raised bed garden kit; two tickets to Edison Ford Estates; and four tickets to Cultural Park Theater.
“I’d like to thank all of our vendors and members for donating items,” said Huffer. “Without LCEC, Cape Volunteer Firement’s Benevolent Association, Danny Yates Landscaping and Scott’s Lawn Service who donate and sponsor us this would not be possible.”
All proceeds raised at the March in the Park, as well as an occasional small plant sale events during the year, goes to help the garden club achieve its goal of civic beautification, working in the Historic Society Rose Garden, the Cape Coral Library butterfly garden and City Hall gardens. In addition to the scholarships, the club sends at least four kids to nature camp in the summer to discover recycling and learn about nature and the environment.