Hudson Valley Garden Association Garden Fair
May 4, Orange County Arboretum, Thomas Bull Memorial Park, Montgomery
The first annual fundraising event for the HVGA features local and specialty garden vendors and exhibitors, arboretum tours, kids gardening activities, and demonstrations, including flower arranging, rose pruning, and soil testing. Three lectures will be held throughout the day, including "Lawn Liberation: A Floriferous Plea for Lawn Alternatives" with Tovah Martin.
Verplanck Garden Club Pre-Mother's Day Plant Sale
May 11, Fishkill Town Hall, Fishkill
Looking for a perfect gift for your mom this year? This plant sale not only offers hanging baskets, herbs, geraniums, and homegrown perennials, but also workshops where kids can make gifts for their mothers. There will also be a collection of artwork on display, seed-planting opportunities to teach about home gardening, a hanging-basket raffle, refreshments, and a table of Master Gardeners to answer questions.
Beneficial Garden Visitors: Birds and Butterflies
May 11, Mid-Hudson Children's Museum, Poughkeepsie
The Mid-Hudson Children's Museum has teamed up with the Master Gardeners of Cornell Cooperative Extension Dutchess County to present a four-part children's gardening series at the museum. In the second of the four workshops, children will build simple nesting boxes for birds and colorful butterflies for garden display, and learn about how these creatures benefit plants, and how to attract them to the garden.
Big Plant and Seedling Sale
May 11-12, May 25-26, Midsummer Farm, Warwick
A plant sale for herbalists. The certified organic farm in Warwick hosts their annual sale, with over 100 different varieties of heirloom and hybrid vegetables, over 200 culinary and medicinal herbs, and flowers of a wide variety, including native flowers and collectible perennials. Midsummer Farm's offering of rare herbs include Medicinal Yarrow, Dragon's Blood Clover, Skullcap, Trollius, Primula Viali, and St. John's Wort.
Friends of Taconic State Park Garden Day
May 11, Copake Falls
Learn how to grow fruit and trees (and fruit trees!) in your backyard. During the gardening-inspired day presented by Friends of Taconic State Park, Lee Reich will lead hands-on workshops on non-toxic, hassle-free methods for growing fruit and tree grafting at the Church of St. John in the Wilderness. There will also be an open garden at the home of Margaret Roach, author of The Backyard Parables, and a plant sale by Broken Arrow Nursery.
Plant Sale, Swap, and Garden Yard Sale
May 18, Deyo Hall, New Paltz
Gardening should be a way to save money by growing your own food rather than spend it on expensive plants and tools. The New Paltz Garden Club's sale and swap is set up yard-sale style so you can find great deals on plants and gardening ephemera. Better yet, if you have plants or items to swap, money doesn't even have to enter the equation. Drop off is from 8-9am, so bring your plants, bulbs, seedlings, seeds, books, tools, pots, vases, and any other gardening-related to swap with other green thumbs.
Perennial Division Workshop
May 18, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge
Divide and conquer at SUNY Ulster's award-winning Xeriscape Garden. Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County's Master Gardeners host a perennial division workshop, offering tips for the best methods for dividing perennials and ornamental grasses. This is a hands-on learning experience, so bring gardening gloves and tools if you have them, as well as pots to take home some divisions from the Xeriscape Garden to integrate into your own home landscape.
Homeowners' Landscape Design Clinic
May 18, Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA
A clinic that focuses on the big-picture questions for homeowners interested in landscape design. Walter Cudnohufsky, founder and director of the Conway School of Landscape Design, presents on common design principles, focusing on problem solving, conceptualizing, and designing a landscape master plan. Selected homes of workshop participants will be used for on-site demonstrations.
Annual Hudson Valley Iris and Daylily Society Iris Show
May 18, Poughkeepsie Galleria, Poughkeepsie
The name "Iris" comes from the Greek word for rainbow, referring to the colorful variety of the flower species. A showroom seems almost like a natural habitat for these dramatic, geometric blooms. The American Iris Society-judged varietals show will accept entries that have been grown, groomed, and entered by a single Iris-auteur, and each entry will be judged according to the standards of its classification and variety.
Garden Tours: Innisfree and Vanderbilt Mansion
May 18, Millbrook; Hyde Park
An icon of 20th-century landscape design, Lester Collins's Innisfree Garden fuses modernism and traditional Chinese and Japanese garden design principles. Take a guided tour of the 185 acres in Millbrook, which surround a glacial lake. At Vanderbilt National Historic Site, interpreters will discuss the history of the gardens and the efforts to restore the grounds as they were in the 1930s. They will also discuss current renovation projects, including "Cherry Walk" and the rose garden terraces. The 1875 Toolhouse building will house photographs of the gardens during the Vanderbilt era.
Wildflower Festival & Heirloom Seedling Sale 2013
May 18-19, Catskill Native Nursery, Kerhonkson
The weekend sale offers a limited stock of rare, native plants, wildflowers, water lilies, exotic fruits, organic heirloom tomatoes, and heirloom seedlings from the Hudson Valley Seed Library. The Tomatothon features large, sturdy plants of repotted, strong-rooted, organically grown tomatoes and peppers. Gardening experts and horticulturists will be on hand to answer questions throughout the weekend.
Cutting Your Way to New Plants
May 23, Mahopac Public Library
A sustainable method for getting new plants—make more from what you have. Master Gardener volunteers and Cornell Cooperative Extension staff will teach how to grow more plants with stem and leaf cuttings. The free class will be held at the Mahopac Library from 7-8:30pm.
