PARKSIDE — Here we are on the verge of our first day at the nursery, staff will start working May 1, and we are open to the public (weather permitting) May 9, in time for Mother’s Day.
Janie Denton, the manager and the board of directors have been busy throughout the winter working on various projects. Janie produced a huge amount of jelly and jam to sell in the gift shop this coming season. She also started annuals to sell at the opening of the greenhouse on May 9. The board met on a few occasions to set dates and outlined upcoming projects to be worked on over the summer.
Dates to keep in mind:
• Celebration of Spring (supper and live auction): Held in the Parkside Heritage Centre (old school) April 27 at pm, admission by advance ticket, ticket sales at Parkside Store, Woodland Pharmacy (Shellbrook) by email to [email protected];
• Opening – May 9; Lilies in Bloom July 20; A Touch of Autumn Sept. 21; open to the public - 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily May 9 to Sept. 21.
Honeywood attended Gardenscape in Saskatoon the last weekend of March and had a successful three days, meeting new and old friends and advertising our heritage site to everyone met.
Celebration of Spring begins at 5 p.m. on April 27 at Parkside Heritage Centre (old school). There will be auction items with more coming in each day. If you would like to donate something towards this or buy a ticket for $30 each, please call 306-747-7287 or email [email protected]. It promises to be a delicious meal of beef brisket and stuffed pork loin with all the extras and homemade pies with ice cream. 50-50 tickets will be available to purchase as you come in. If other years are any indication, the live auction with auctioneers Myron Schmaltz and son Eric donating their time, will provide lots of fun and laughter. We hope to see you there!
On a sad note, Honeywood was vandalized sometime between April 13 and 16. The door to the log house porch was kicked in, but they did not get into the main house. The office door was kicked in, and it appears nothing was taken from either place. However, they did get into Mark’s tool/equipment shed and took the two chainsaws, a skill saw and numerous other tools easy to carry. They opened and went into all the other buildings as well, but apparently, we didn’t have what they were looking for in them. They did do damage to the two trucks by trying to hot wire them, and left a mess on the steering columns of each one. That will probably be costly to fix. Although they did damage, we are very thankful it was not worse.
Last year, Janie and Mark started re-planting the south lily field. This spring, we have had the opportunity to acquire some old and new varieties of lilies from the Canadian Prairie Lily Society. We also received an offer of a large donation of heritage lilies from Lisa’s Lilies to pick up this spring. So, with this in mind, we can replenish our fields and have them look amazing again. We will also have a great selection of lilies to plant in Gayle’s Learning Garden and have that open to the public this summer.
We are hiring of two young people through the Canada Summer Jobs program. We are looking forward to having them join us in the care and maintenance of our charming heritage nursery!
We greatly appreciate all the tremendous support, both from donations and from the volunteers that we have received throughout the years. Without the help of you, our friends and neighbours, Honeywood would not be the great place it is !
