Ribault Garden Club opened its fall program Sept. 17 with an open house built around a single pitch: You don't need dirt, or even a yard, to grow your own food.
The club's Membership and Conservation Open House drew members and the public to hear from Cyndi Scully, who has maintained the aeroponic tower gardens at BEAM's Grace Gardens for years. Scully walked the crowd through the mechanics and history of tower gardening, a vertical growing method that feeds plants with nutrient-rich water on a timed cycle instead of soil.
Scully got her start with the technology a decade ago, when her family gave her a Tower Garden for Mother's Day. She had been selling fruit and vegetable supplements in an effort to get her children to eat more produce, she said, before her interest shifted to the growing systems themselves.
“It's just been a love affair with water and plants ever since,” she told the group.
Scully has spent about five years volunteering at BEAM's Grace Gardens, where the operation has grown from a handful of donated units to nine towers tall enough to require a ladder. The gardens survived a hard freeze last year with the loss of only one section, she said, a result she credited partly to luck and partly to keeping the systems running continuously in cold weather.
A club built around service
The open house is part of a season Ribault Garden Club President Lisa Corn Bottaro described as built around “Sharing, through Education, our Interest in Design, Horticulture, Environmental Conservation, and Youth Gardening.”
The Jacksonville Beach club, which traces its roots to 1939, received the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs' Best Public Program award this year for an earlier open house. It also received a National Garden Clubs Plant America grant to start a Junior Garden Club for second graders at Neptune Beach Elementary School, a project set to launch with guidance from a longtime youth gardening mentor.
The club's community focus extends well beyond its open house. It sponsors BEAM's Grace Gardens and its Thanksgiving baskets, and it donates to Beaches Habitat for Humanity, the Duval Audubon Society and manatee rescue and rehabilitation efforts at the Jacksonville Zoo and Botanical Gardens.
It also funds several Florida Federation of Garden Clubs programs, including Camp Wekiva camperships, the federation's scholarship fund and the S.E.E.K. Youth Conference, along with its own youth gardening and scholarship fund. Individual garden circles within the club run therapy garden projects at Anthem Lakes and Windsor Pointe, and members work directly with shut-ins and seniors.
The club has received letters of gratitude this year from Beaches Habitat for Humanity, BEAM, the Jacksonville Zoo and Botanical Gardens, and Anthem Lakes.
Earlier this year, the club restored its original 1960 Blue Star Memorial Highway marker, which honors military service members, and relocated it to the Beaches Museum as part of its tribute to the nation's 250th anniversary. National Garden Clubs started the marker program more than 80 years ago, and Bottaro has said she wants Ribault Garden Club to continue supporting it.
A venue for hire, too
Ribault Garden Club also rents its clubhouse at 705 Second Ave. N. in Jacksonville Beach for weddings and other private events. The space holds up to 175 people and includes an elevated stage, an atrium with French doors, a commercial kitchen and a bridal suite, along with landscaped grounds featuring a certified wildlife habitat and native garden.
Rentals include tables and padded folding chairs. Catering, decor, bar service and music are up to the renter.
What's next
The club's upcoming public events include a Garden Center Day on Oct. 22 featuring herbalist Marsha Fort Herren, who will discuss herbs and their culinary and medicinal properties, and a Trivia, Tunes and Tacos dinner night Oct. 23 hosted by the club's Night Owls Garden Circle. Both are open to the public, and the club requests reservations.
