Review Friends of the Garden Open House & Winter Party January 12, 2012

Review Friends of the Garden Open House & Winter Party January 12, 2012
Quick Takes, with photos from www.OzarksGardens.com

WOW AND DOUBLE WOW!  When the Frogometer in our back yard showed it was snowing Thursday, January 12th (and the Frogometer is never wrong), our hearts sank for the annual Friends of the Garden Open House & Winter Party set for that evening. With biting cold, fierce winds, and lots of slickety spots on the roads, we feared nobody, but nobody, would show up.

But frabjous joy, calloo, callay, we couldn’t have been more wrong that day. Look what happened. It was a record turnout, standing room only, and a terrific time for all, with lots of delicious foods, desserts that inspired vows of dieting, lots and lots of extremely nifty door prizes like the handcrafted wine box plant stand and the miniature house shown below, a great talk on plants that survived the Ozarks summer of 2011, and an inside look at a major Friends meeting.

Listen, if you missed this event this year, mark it on your calendar for next because it’s huge fun and a unique chance to meet and make friends with a wonderful gardening community. As for the Friends of the Garden, they described the night with no little surprise as “Fantastic,” “Spectacular,” and “The best Open House we’ve ever had.”

We have to add a note, too, on the amazingly generous folks who contributed the door prizes–plants, gift bags, gift certificates, floral arrangements, hanging baskets, bird feeders, bird houses, pottery, handicrafts, and more. They include Botanical Center Boutique, Carson’s Nurseries, Fassnight Creek Farm, Friends of the Garden, Garden Adventures Nursery, the Greater Ozarks Hosta Association, Marisol International, O’Quinn’s Water Gardens, Peggy’s Flowers, Perkins Restaurant, Schaffitzel’s Greenhouse, Steinert’s Greenhouse and Garden, WannaGetta Pizza, Wickman’s Garden Village, woodworker Don Brown, and gourd artist Bob Kipfer.