2016 Summer Recap

Now that things are slowing down in the garden, it's time to revive this blog! We'll try to post monthly updates of the garden's progress, so stay tuned. I'm really excited about the productivity of the garden this summer, despite struggles with wire worms and aphids, and hope it'll prove even more productive next year. We had an abundance of peas and beans throughout the summer. Our experimental watermelons grew happily under the warmth of the newly-installed greenhouse. 

The new variety of strawberry we planted, "Totem", have also done very well - we've had flowers and fruit since May and they show no signs of stopping. Our apples are almost ripe for the picking; I'm excited to make pie for the club with these Northern Spy apples. Unfortunately, out late-planted tomatoes are still looking very green, we'll see if they manage to ripen before the cold sets in.

- Lianne (President)

Moving On to the 2016/2017 School Year

L-R: Lianne Campbell and Janice Park, the new co-Presidents of the PW Garden

Now that we're nearing the end of the 2015-2016 school year, it's a bittersweet moment for Haske and myself. We're graduating from Prince of Wales and will be retiring from our positions as co-Presidents of the PW Garden Club, yet we're also extremely excited for what Janice and Lianne, our successors, have in store for next year!

Throughout this past school year, Janice and Lianne have been the first Vice-Presidents of the PW Garden Club to go through a new and extensive training program, the result of a massive behind-the-scenes revamp of the training and succession model employed by the Garden Club, the parent organization of the PW Community Garden.

A garden is only as good as its leaders. Thus, the main, overarching goal Haske and I had while we led the garden this year was to establish a new model of sustainable leadership by establishing a new focus on training and mentorship. Janice and Lianne have been familiarizing themselves with running the garden/club and gaining hands-on leadership experience since the fall of 2015, with guidance, help, feedback and advice from Haske and myself; additionally, there has been a slow, gradual transition of responsibility, meaning that Janice and Lianne have in fact been running the day-to-day minutiae of the garden for awhile now! This new model, which was initiated this year, is starkly different from the conventional approach employed by other clubs at PW, wherein next year's leaders are simply chosen at the end of the year.

The full long-term effects of this revamp (and several smaller, related initiatives, like a Facebook group of the garden's former leaders to act as a resource for current/future leaders (former leaders reading this post and wondering why you're not in the Facebook group: contact the current leaders and we'll add you right in!)) will not be seen until several years down the line. However, the short-term effects of this revamp are already evident, because Janice and Lianne are more than prepared to take over the garden.

At our year-end club celebration/party on June 7th, Haske and myself presented Janice and Lianne with ceremonial nametags as a way to "pass the torch" and officially promote them to co-Presidents of the Prince of Wales Garden Club for the 2016-2017 school year. Their Vice-Presidents, and future co-Presidents for the 2017-2018 school year, Jasmine Fung and Alice Zhang, have also been chosen as well, and will begin their training soon. Haske and I are most definitely a bit sentimental to be leaving, but with successors as accomplished, prepared, and ready as ours -- perhaps the most prepared any newly promoted Garden Club President has been -- we're not the least bit worried to pass on stewardship of the garden, and we're in fact extremely excited for its future under such great leaders, who we're confident will accomplish fantastic things next year!

Cheers,
William Li
President, Prince of Wales Garden Club
(Now Retired)

2016 Spring Update

Sorry for the hiatus between posts, but now that spring has rolled around, we’ve jumped back into gardening!

Thanks to Garden Club VPs Lianne Campbell and Janice Park, who have taken on a significant leadership role in preparation for leading the garden next year, we’re prepared a new system of hose reels in preparation for the upcoming growing season. Club members used to have to store the entire hose in the storage box, dragging it in and out and untangling it each time we needed to water. Needless to say, summer watering was a laborious workout for many!

Now, with our new hose reels, watering has been simplified dramatically. We have two reels by the storage box — one with a hose to the tap, and another hose to water either the immediate beds, or to be attached to a hose reel in the far garden to water the trees. There is now significantly less dragging around of the thick rubber hose through the grass, and hopefully will make watering easier and more fun!

As an added bonus, our storage box looks significantly less cluttered!

Finally, club members have also started planting new plants! Our new watermelons have sprouted under the warmth of our greenhouse cover, our strawberries from last year have started growing again (and look yummy!), and there's some new plants as well. We will also be starting a new initiative soon in dividing the beds into sections for community planting, and sections for individual planting.

More updates coming soon!

—William