Garden Club of Cape Coral | March in the Park
Get ready for the largest gardening event in Cape Coral! “March in the Park” is the Garden Club of Cape Coral’s major fundraiser for Cape Coral high school senior scholarships! This fun festival is free and will be our 17th Annual Plant, garden, and art sale. Mark your calendars…March 8… Saturday, 9 a.m. until 3 p.m… It’s a huge plant sale!
Our special event, for the first time is being held at Cape Coral’s beautiful Rotary Park, 5505 Rose Garden Road. The Garden Club of Cape Coral is a non-profit organization with all the festival’s proceeds going to high school senior scholarships, local middle school and high school garden projects and other club community projects.
There will be over 40 garden vendors with plants of all kinds, trees, palms, shrubs, ground cover, native plants and, of course, the Garden Club will have over 1,000 plants grown by members…garden art, essential and fragrance oils, glass reflections, fish faces, metal works, stepping stones. and an assortment of planters.
A kids’ booth with a face painting and activities, along with take-home projects for all ages. Come and enjoy the food and music. There will be opportunity drawings throughout the day. Best of all admission and parking are free.
A little background on the Garden Club of Cape Coral…The formation of the non-profit Garden Club was 1997. The club was founded by master gardener Marty Ward and longtime gardening friend Beverly Ray. The 23 paid members had their first meetings at Ward’s home under the direction of president Sherie Bleiler. The club quickly established affiliations with the National Garden Clubs Inc., Florida Federation of Garden Clubs and the Fort Myers-Lee County Garden Council Inc. Early on, the club participated in many projects, including planting and maintaining planters along Cape Coral Parkway and maintaining the Tiny Tots Garden for children at Four Freedoms Park.
The club now maintains four gardens…one is the prestigious Rose Garden at the Cape Coral Museum of History on Cultural Park Boulevard. The roses were originally part of a national tourist attraction, called Cape Coral Gardens, which also included the famous Waltzing Waters, lakes and water ski shows, plus hosted many celebrities such as Bob Hope. The garden included more than 40,000 roses. The attraction, facing funding issues, closed in 1969, giving way to development. It is now the sight of Tarpon Point. But the roses were soon to bloom again.
In 1990, Lois Herbert wanted to pay tribute to the memory of her father, Russell Herbert, and asked the museum to pay tribute to him and to the roses. A new rose garden was redesigned in 2007 with raised flower beds. A team of Garden Club members visits the rose garden weekly to take care of the precious flowers. The second garden is at Eco Park with the Blue Star Memorial Marker, third is the butterfly garden at the southwest library, and the fourth garden is at Sands Boulevard.
The Garden Club continues to educate the community about important landscaping and environmental techniques through our monthly Tuesday evening meetings at the Episcopal Church on Del Prado available to local residents. And in our weekly column in the Cape Coral Breeze newspapers. Our membership is open to anyone interested in learning about Southwest Florida gardening.
Mark your calendars…March 8… 9 a.m. until 3 p.m., for a huge plant sale. You won’t want to miss this fun festival for the entire family. It’s March in the Park…Rotary Park, 5500 Rose Garden Road.
A limited number of carts will be available, so guests are encouraged to bring their own. You won’t want to miss this!
I’d like to leave you with Audrey Hepburn’s inspiration… “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”
Ann Block is past president of the Garden Club of Cape Coral. Visit gardenclubofcapecoral.com and like them on Facebook.