Gardening Can Be a Lifetime of Enjoyment, Relaxation, and Accomplishment
by Steve Froelich
If you were to ask local gardeners why they indulge in an activity which can be both frustrating and time consuming, their responses might be surprising, though logical to those who also garden.
John Platt, Randy Greeno, Ron Menges, and Bill Jones, all members of the Men’s and Women’s Garden Club of Findlay were open and eager to talk about their love of for gardening.
For Platt, gardening is mentally relaxing. Greeno, the current president of the group, agrees and adds that gardening relieves the stress that comes from his daily work. “I just feel better when I am gardening,” he says.
For Jones, also president of Master Gardeners, gardening enables him to get in touch with nature and appreciate life. Besides, he says, “I also get my exercise working with plants.” Menges is a gardener, at least in part, because of his father. “Dad required all of us kids to help out,” he says. Today, he still maintains a small garden at his home and shares his bounty with the neighbors.
For them all, gardening is a great conversation starter, a way to develop fellowship with others and a way to get those others involved. “All of us give people plants, so they can work with what appeals to them,” Platt says, “And we offer our ‘expertise.’ We’ve got a lot of it, believe me.”
The Men’s and Women’s Garden Club of Findlay currently has 49 members, though Greeno adds, the club would like to add more people, particularly young men and women. The club, founded in 1954 has had several notable presidents, including Bill Lanning who was also the national president for community gardeners.
They sponsor the Junior Fair at the Hancock County Fairgrounds. Perhaps the most visible of the things they do is the annual planting at the triangle near the Carriage House Plaza. Every spring a group of members thoroughly cleans up the triangle and then plants it with wide variety of flowering plants.
The group also has 36 beds of plants located across from Kohl’s Warehouse on County Road 140. It is open for visitors and also provides plants for study in various ways of growing, the proper care of plants, and the effects of weather on plants and the insects that reside in them.
The Men’s and Women’s Garden Club of Findlay also helps with various community gardens, including the one this year at First Presbyterian Church, where three beds are ready for whomever wants to plant them.. Water, compost, and so forth is supplied, so all the prospective gardeners have to do is work the land for their enjoyment/ The cost is nominal, and the project is led by Dick Deerhake and Linda Laux.
Plat began in 1981 with a small garden. Then, that winter he watched a PBS show called “The Square Foot Garden with Mel Bartholemew.” Greeno, on the other hand, came to the aid of a neighbor whose husband had steadfastly refused to get involved with gardening. She asked Randy to plant along the front of her house, and she would pay for what was needed. He completed the job and noticed that soon after her spouse began planting first along one side of the house, then along the other side. In no time at all, the neighbor had planted around the entire house and a gardener was “born.”
The group will be having its annual fund raiser, a seed sale, which will be
held at the Carriage House Plaza on May 9. Platt, Greeno, Menges, and Jones not only hope to see everyone there but they also hope to bring out the gardener in a whole lot of people who might otherwise not give planting a thought.
