The Williamstown Garden Club serves the Williamstown community through its mission of Civic Beautification. This work is visible each growing season as members work to plant and maintain flowers and plants at numerous locations throughout town. 

September Meeting Minutes

by | Sep 15, 2015 | Meeting Minutes

Minutes, Williamstown Garden Club Meeting – 9/12/15

The meeting was called to order by the President, Sue Metzner.  The minutes from the last meeting were approved.

Sue thanked Eja Heekin and Kathy Kalker and congratulated them on an extremely successful and imaginative fall plant sale, which grossed $1483.00

Sue then led the members present in a strategic planning exercise on the general question of what the mission of the Williamstown Garden Club should be.  The following consensus evolved:

  1. Members felt that civic beautification was most important.
  2. Next in importance were meetings with programs on such topics as horticulture, plant propagation, etc. using outside speakers.
  3. Membership and participation in the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts to which we pay dues and through which our certification as a 501-C (non-profit) tax classification, as well as our club insurance, is obtained.  It also makes Federation programs available to us.
  4. There were a number of other activities suggested such as flower arranging/flower shows, environmental education, involvement with garden therapy,  with seniors and children, scholarships, which were eliminated either because of lack of interest, overlapping with other organizations in town, or previous club experience.

 

Ideas for sustaining participation and leadership were as follows:

  1. We seem to be committed to 9 or 8 meetings a year, and we probably need to start the year in mid-April, but members thought that Tuesdays at 1:00 were probably better than Mondays.  It was felt that the Spring Plant Sale should be as late in May as possible but avoid the Memorial Day weekend.  There would be time to renegotiate the date at the first meeting in April if, as this year, the spring is particularly late.
  2. We felt that we needed better outreach to attract new and younger members and the following suggestions were made:  hold meetings open to the public on Saturdays, have information about the club available at the Spring Plant Sale, at a booth in the Farmer’s Market, have a WGC member attend and speak at an Elementary School PTO meeting,  have a movie night at Images, place an ad in the papers or do a mailing saying “if you appreciate what the WGC does for the town, send us a donation”, etc.
  3. Leadership is a very important issue right now.  We decided that we would start a program of co-chairs for President and Vice-President.  In this scenario, the 2 vice-presidents would serve for a year, and then move up to the presidency and the personal commitment would be 2 years instead of 4.  We will try to start this process for next year, when Diane  Glick and Joan Wright will be co-presidents.  Co-chairs are probably also a good idea for the important committees so that leaders have  a way to share tasks and bounce ideas off one another.
  4. Participation is also an issue, and it was suggested that we develop more flexible membership categories.  Also it was suggested that a mailing go out to each member before the organization meeting in April giving all the different ways (besides weeding, deadheading, and digging in the hot sun), that members could contribute to the work of the club.

 

Respectfully submitted, Joan Wright, Recording Secretary