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February 2025

Join us the third week in February for our first meeting of 2025. Topic to be announced!

As always, members attend free of charge and non-members can attend for $5 (payable in cash at the door).  For meeting location details, please see our meeting info page.

PAST PRESENTATIONS and EVENTS

November 2024: Holiday Floral Arrangements: Learn How to Create Your Own
Elvira Louka, a professional florist, demonstrated how to create holiday floral arrangements to grace our tables and living spaces.

October 2024: Intriguing Air Plants with Sheena Swirlz
Ms. Swirlz, Coordinator of Urban Homesteading Montreal and the Balcony Garden Project gave a fascinating demonstration on how to include soil-less plants in your indoor garden and shared best practices on growing and maintaining low-maintenance plants. See Sheena's presentation by clicking on the link: Sheena Swirlz-Tillandsia presentation.

September 2024: How to Choose the Best Greenery for Your Backyard with Natacha Martin
Ms. Martin, owner of Oasis Urbain, a horticulture company in Montreal, showed us how to create fabulous outdoor spaces with the right trees, hedges, and shrubs.

At left, marigold, summer 2024.

May 15th: An Evening of Member Sharing: A Wealth of Horticultural Knowledge facilitated by Member-At-Large, John Warren
 All present left much richer in horticultural knowledge and more prepared for the gardening season ahead.

May 18th (SATURDAY): Annual Perennial Sale 
in front of Jean Coutu Pharmacy, 6224 Somerled Ave. in N.D.G. Donations of perennials (by members & non-members) were greatly appreciated.

April 2024: Illustrated Herbals & the History of the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University with Dr. Mary Hague-Yearl

We enjoyed a remarkable presentation of this impressive library’s works on medicinal plants, herbals and more, along with an overview of the history of the Osler Library. Dr Hague-Yearl also brought several non-rare books on illustrated herbals and Canadian medicinal plants.

March 2024: Clematis & Rose: The Best of Friends with Dr. Christie Lovat

Clematis and rose have a long and complicated history in cultivation and can be perfect partners in gardens. We learned how the history of these two groups of plants determines how to care for them today, and how to integrate these two species into a garden.

February 2024: The Wonder of Weeds with Monica Giacomin

A wild patch of goldenrod, mullein or yarrow adds a beautiful splash of colour and texture to your garden as they invite an array of pollinators to enhance your blooms. We learned how to identify, grow, harvest and transform a variety of wild plants, commonly referred to as weeds, into nourishment and herbal medicine. See Monica's presentation by clicking on the link: WEHS Wonder of Weeds Feb 2024

November 2023: Holiday Floral Arrangements: Learn How to Create Your Own

Professional Florist Elvira Louka of Elvira Design. Ms. Louka returned with a whole new slate of holiday floral arrangements and demonstrated how you to recreate them at home. 

We also announced the winners of this year's Photography Contest and displayed all the entries.

October 2023: Fossil Plants from the Lower St. Lawrence

Ingrid Birker, Alumna, Redpath Museum Public Education Program (McGill University) gave a fascinating presentation about the palaeobotanical evolution of eastern Canada. She showed us how ancient fossils have been used by ecologists to reconstruct entire plant species, their evolutionary histories and past environments.

You can view or re-view her presentation here Fossil plants wehs oct 18 2023

May 2023: The Healing Power of Cannabis

Monica Giacomin, Community Herbalist & Educator, of Herbs on the Side, gave an informative and educational lecture on cannabis, its healing powers, how to prepare and ingest it, as well as how to grow it and existing restrictions.  

April 2023: Climbing Plants for Home and Garden

Dr. Christie Lovit, PhD, from McGill's Bieler School of Environment, gave a great overview of the different types of climbers, how they evolved, what each type is best or least suited for, and a sampling of her favorite climbing houseplants, annuals and perennials.

You can view or re-view her presentation here climbing-plants-2023.pdf.  We could not include the great video showing how tendril climbers do their thing in the .pdf version, but you can see something similar on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/WDlSq-QnjFo

March 2023: Plant a Pollinator Garden

Reiko Kobayashi, Environment Technician for the Town of Montreal West, gave an enlightening presentation on pollinator-friendly gardening, with a special focus on Monarch butterflies and how we can all help to increase their numbers. For those who would like to take a closer look and those who could not attend, you can view Reiko's presentation here: 2023 03 pollinator garden wehs.

February 2023: Falaise St-Jacques

Lisa Mintz, co-founder of Sauvons La Falaise! and executive director of Urbanature, gave a very interesting presentation on the ecological and political history of the Falaise, the current situation and future plans which would link the Falaise to other greenspaces around the island of Montreal. You can get more information about the Falaise at https://www.sauvonslafalaise.org/ 

You can follow Lisa Mintz's activities around outdoor and environmental education at /https://www.urbanature.org/.

For information about the agenda for the rest of this year or for a list of previous year presentations, go to the Meetings page and scroll down.