​Ripley junior horticulturalists make insect houses at Bruce Botanical Food Gardens

The Ripley and District Horticultural Society’s “For Our Youth” Club braved several downpours to meet at one of its favourite spots in August. The Bruce Botanical Food Gardens in Ripley is near and dear to both the senior and junior horticultural groups, and staff has welcomed the youth club with open arms many times over the years.

The skies cleared just in time for the club to gather in front of the Plant Family Tree that hangs on the main garden shed. Built by garden manager Aprille Fox and her summer students, it features hand-painted pictures of the different plants that grow in the gardens, organized into their respective families on separate branches.

The club members recognized some of their own handiwork, as the wooden disc painting crafts they did last year became part of the tree. It was great to see the kids remember facts they learned during the Plant Families theme from two years ago.

The group raced back to the Hoop House, where leader Kim Lowry led a brief discussion about pollinators, asking the members to name as many as they could, besides honey bees. They talked about native bees, butterflies, bumblebees, hornets and wasps and other types of insects that love to visit plants.

Then Aprille brought two large, roofed wooden structures to the tables. She explained that the buildings would be turned into houses for various pollinators that lived and over-wintered inside the stalks and stems of plants. Members would decorate their structures with paint, and then fill them with the mysterious sounding “insect houses.”

Summer student Kenzie helped get paint and brushes on the tables, and the members enthusiastically dove into the task. They made floral designs, beautiful pictures and even witty word play painted in bright colours on both the structures. Leaving the paint to dry on their creations, the kids moved on to their next activity: learning how to pot and grow lavender from cuttings.

With lots of lavender in the garden to choose from, Aprille showed the kids how to cut small pieces off the branches, scrape the ends to remove the rough outer bark and find the green centre. The group returned to the Hoop House for planting. Everyone filled small pots with dirt and popped the lavender pieces into the soil for a deep watering. The plants would go home with members who were instructed to keep them out of direct sunlight and keep looking for new growth. They will check in at the next meeting to see who had success!

The final activity for the day was building the insect houses to go inside the larger wooden structures. Aprille and Kenzie pre-cut all sorts of hollow stems, branches and stalks from plants grown in the gardens, and the kids had great fun choosing, trimming and jamming the different pieces into terracotta cylinders. The cylinders will be stacked inside the structures and placed on display in the heart of the gardens for a variety of pollinators to enjoy over the seasons.

The group wrapped up the meeting with a celebration for all the kids who entered art in the Ontario Horticultural Association (OHA) District Competition. Special congratulations to Brianna Kropt who won first prize and Best in Show for her Blooming Along the Waters entry.

Also, to Rhonda and Joslynn Curran for their amazing and detailed 2023 For Our Youth Plant Families scrapbook which also won first prize and Best in Show. The scrapbook showcases all of the club’s meetings, articles and awards and is a wonderful record of the group’s journey together.

Leader Melody Smillie’s lavender-flavoured shortbread and lavender-infused lemonade were absolutely delicious and ended the meeting on a very sweet note.

The next meeting was set for September where the youth would be exploring all the different trees at leader Rhonda Curran’s farm, making a special autumn treat, and working on fall fair entries.