Our History

The Georgian Bay Garden Club was started in 1990 by six women, all enthusiastic gardeners, two of whom were also Design and Horticulture Judges. The impetus for establishing a garden club came from Mim Cady, who returned from an overseas posting to discover that the Owen Sound Horticultural Society, of which she had previously been a member, had folded. The time seemed right to start a garden club, something that she was familiar with from her many postings in US cities. Helen Skinner, a Past President of the Garden Clubs of Ontario, and Dodie Wesley, a Past President of the Garden Club of Toronto joined this inaugural meeting to provide suggestions and guidance in forming a garden club.

No grass grew under the feet of the six founding members. More members were recruited; decisions were made about meeting dates and locations, programs, finances and committees structures. The aims of the club were established, and finally a constitution was written.

In June of 1991, the newly minted Georgian Bay Garden Club (now twenty members strong) joined the Garden Clubs of Ontario.

As the decade unfolded membership increased, as did the members’ ambitions. In 1997 Club members decided to establish a large public garden, later christened the Garden-on-the-Bay, situated between the Bayshore Community Centre and the waters of Georgian Bay. This project required site approval from the City of Owen Sound, the hiring of both a landscape architect and a contractor, plus a great deal of money. The Garden-on-the-Bay was officially opened in June of 2000, as the Club’s millennium project.

In the late 1990s the Club undertook the seemingly hopeless project to eradicate or severely curtail the rampantly invasive Purple Loosestrife that was choking the wetland shores of the Sydenham River flowing through Owen Sound.