High Elevation Gardening Web Log "Blog"

The volunteer gardeners at Olivia White Hospice Home had another successful season in 2008. Our regular volunteers were in the garden weekly (Karen Kent, Nancy Palmer, Marcia Lamkin, and David Hockman). Leslie Penick had a busy summer with her brother visiting, but found time to help us get mulch on occasion and rejoined our group this fall. We also had many new master gardener volunteers who joined us on our weekly garden day and some who came on our special Saturday workdays with Cynthia Katte supervising. Gus Delgadillo, Joe Harte, and Al Katte helped with many garden repairs, tree cutting, watering and hardscape. Linda Guarino brought her drip system expertise. Crys Wells and her family and Vicki Goodwin came on many occasions and helped keep our gardens weeded. Sara Clancey a local pediatric OT, and Elsie Ellis, my Mom, also joined us for about half of the season. Beside our regular garden care we added a compost pile, began a native garden, finished a pathway around the home and started planning and rock gathering for a new rock garden next spring. Norm Erickson, the first gardener at Olivia White, retired this season due to illness. We will miss his creativity and caring for all the beds directly in front of the home, but will continue to talk with him about those gardens as we finish our drip irrigation in the spring.

Fundraising went well this year. We had our usual 10% day at Warner's in July and our 2nd Garden Party in August. Catherine Sickafoose did a painting for us for the 2nd year. It was used as a theme for our party, auctioned, and will continue to help us raise funds because we made note cards from it. Many other artists, restaurants, and Flagstaff businesses contributed other auction/raffle items. Even though we had dime sized hail on the day of the party, we had a large group attending that participated in the raffle/auction and hat contest. We were able to raise enough money to finish our drip system in front of the home.

We continue to get many large donations for the gardens from resident's families and local businesses. The Mickleson/Fihleman families donated a beautiful large arbor bench they built for the garden. On Arbor Day Warner's added a hawthorne tree to our rose garden. As usual, we had many donations that just appeared in the garden anonymously - cherub statue, wind chime and faerie.

Many groups continue to participate in the garden. The Plein-aire Artists came to the garden and painted on a couple of days so you may see original paintings for sale in the community. We participated in Earth Day and had a large crew (25) helping us to get ready for the season. The Coconino County Adult Probation Community Service crew re-stained our gazebo in the spring. The Master Naturalists came and helped us with removal of some noxious weeds. AmeriCorp (15) spent a morning in the garden helping us finish our pathway around the home, weeding, and creating a path to our compost. The Grand Canyon Youth Corp came in October to plant bulbs and help us clean up. We entered the Native Plant and Xeriscape contests and won a prize for the "best use of native plants in a community garden." We again entered the Coconino County Fair and won many 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places for our flowers and vegetables.

Thank you to all who help us physically in the garden, provide needed donations and support us with their continuing enjoyment of the gardens. It is a pleasure for us to continue the work in a "place for the heart". If you want to join us next season, we will begin planning meetings in January, and garden work in April weather permitting. E-mail if you would like to join us.

Loni Shapiro
Volunteer Garden Coordinator
Master Gardener maxmaddy@infomagic.net