It was a long time in the making, but the Saskatchewan Perennial Society Website Committee is happy to announce that our new website is up and running - www.saskperennial.ca. We sport a new look with a wealth of information, all well organized for easy reference.
The home page gives some of the background of our organization and features activities of the society. At the bottom of the page is a list of announcements. A detailed description of all those announcements is repeated in posts on the news tab.
Our Roots gives a bit of history of the organization since its inception in 1988 and includes excerpts from newsletters of the society detailing milestones of its first years of operation.
The calendar covers all events that have been scheduled by the SPS, and when you click on an activity on a particular date, you get detailed information and the location of that particular event. You can drop us a line at Contact Us to let us know about your events.
I am particularly excited about the gardens at the zoo section, which takes you to subpages of the Saskatoon Forestry Farm Park and Zoo, as well as to pages describing our gardens there, the Robin Smith Meditation Garden and the Heritage Rose Garden. These two gardens were established by the SPS and are cared for primarily by our volunteers, but with some help from the City of Saskatoon.
Labour and Learn are our work bees at the Forestry Farm Gardens. Volunteers weed, prune, deadhead, plant and transplant perennials, and other tasks required to keep a garden looking beautiful. All the L and L dates are listed here (weather permitting). Feel free to join us, where you have an opportunity to learn from a seasoned gardener about pruning, dividing and other garden maintenance tips.
Garden tours have been a part of our organization for many years. Members welcome other gardening enthusiasts to their gardens. As hosts they often provide valuable information about plants in their garden to visitors. This is a great way to get new ideas for your own little patch of land. A list of dates for garden tours is provided here. All our garden tours are free and open to the public.
The Plant Exchange, another favourite activity for many of our members, is an opportunity to socialize and exchange perennials. We usually have an exchange in the spring and the fall. Dates are listed on this page along with how it all works and where we hold this event. This is a members-only activity, but our low-cost memberships are sold at the door.
The SPS library section provides a brief history of our library and includes a complete listing of materials available to our membership at information meetings of the society. Some book reviews are included and this section will probably be expanded as time goes on. You do need a membership in the SPS to be able to borrow materials.
The president's message is a report presented at our AGM and gives an overview of the Society's accomplishments over the last year. We have posted the messages starting in 2008, so if you want to know who we had for speakers in the fall or which activities we offered in any particular year you can access that information here. This report also allows the president to thank those involved, so you may get to learn about some of the volunteers who are involved in providing you with the programs offered by our Society.
The gardening column subpage connects you to Bridges, a weekly newspaper produced by the StarPhoenix. The Saskatchewan Perennial Society provides the gardening column in this publication as a public service and you can go and look at past issues of the column if you happen to have missed it.
We also provide a list of the board of directors, information about membership and contact information. You can search the site for key words at the top right hand side of the screen. This then, in a nutshell, is your introduction to our website. Feel free to browse around and give us some feedback.
- This column is provided courtesy of the Saskatchewan Perennial Society (www.saskperennial.ca; email: [email protected]).
