Daffodil Enthusiasts, Societies and groups, Youth

Children arranging flowers

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ALL gardening/flower groups should be concentrating more on bringing in youth to the various clubs. Since that is difficult to do then we should be taking the plants and flowers to the children! I thought this was one of the highlights of the whole ADS convention.

What a brilliant idea to allow or help these children be creative… I was NOT sure on all of the particulars of who or what brought this was about as they were busy in a back hallway and I was rushing through and they were gone when I got back that way.

I would like to know more about coordinating the adults and the children, as some of the following that I sent on to our master gardener group and our Texas native plant society is probably not exactly correct but it gives us all and idea of how to make the children HAPPY to be working with flowers.

Thanks to everyone who made this such a wonderful convention! Keith Kridler

4 comments for “Children arranging flowers”

  1. Keith, thanks for pointing this out! I wonder how many of us weren’t aware of this? A great idea!

    Mary Lou

  2. Here in the Cincinnati area, Keith, we went a step further than that. We had a judged daffodil show at the elementary school (mostly 2nd graders I think) and it was a great success. The students had undertaken re-landscaping the entire school grounds and did lots of research. They found my name and invited me to speak. Then we had lots of bulbs left over at the end of the season and gave each student a bag. And we had a judged show that following spring. We had hoped to repeat it this year, but the early spring here in Cincinnati made sure there weren’t any daffodils for a show. But the students are looking forward to next year’s show. Mary Lou Gripshover gave the students one of her seedlings to name and when I visited there a couple weeks ago the students proudly pointed it out to me.
    I think this is important work. I fully realize that it is unlikely that these students will be active in our groups during their young adult lives. But some day in the future they’ll see a notice about a daffodil show and say, “I’m going to THAT!”
    This is one way we perpetuate our organizations.
    Bill Lee

    —-

  3. Bill,
    I feel that it would be great to introfuce the youth
    to the better show and garden varieties. I realize
    that we all appreciate bulbs more when we have to
    work and pay to get them, but I would liketo be able to
    offer young enthusiasts the best bulbs- would you
    think the Wister Award winners or the Pannill award winners
    would be a better choice? I lean towards show winners,
    but I dispair of keeping severalof the show flowers alive,
    much less increasing them- I have completely lost a
    couple of great ones planted in multiple places. But on the
    other hand the Wister Bed here is very thin in places
    (they did come as I recall from a WDS collection).
      I collected open pollinated seed from Geometrics this
    afternoon!
    John Beck
     

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