Huntley Project Garden Club

President: Charles Dick (406-348-2429)

We are a small, friendly club with 16 members. We welcome new members at any time -- no experience necessary. We meet the 2nd Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. in the community room of the Yellowstone Valley Electric Cooperative.

Our money-making project involves maintaining landscaping at MetraPark in Billings. We design, plant, and maintain two large flower beds around the pond. Designing is done in the fall, by December the flowers are ordered from the Special K Ranch in Columbus, and in late May the beds are planted. Members do the weeding during the summer and make a special effort to see that the beds look very nice for Montana Fair in August. Our club also takes care of two flower beds in Huntley. Flowers for those beds are raised in a greenhouse by one of our members.

We support our community by donating to the Barkemeyer Park fund in Huntley, we participate in Christmas Bright, and contribute to the senior SNAP party held after graduation. We also donated to the Blue Star Marker in Missoula and we help plan and participate in an annual flower and garden show held in September at the Gainan's Flower Center in Billings. Several of our members help with keeping our roadsides free of garbage.

We hold a flower show in August. It's always fun to see the beautiful entries from our members and members of other local clubs. Quite often we have the children of two of our members in attendance at meetings and participating in the youth division of the flower show. They are interested in gardening and help their mothers with their gardens. We have a number of other children participate, also, and they come up with some novel ideas to enter in the children's division.

If anyone would like more information about our club programs, speakers and activities, please feel free to contact Charles Dick, listed above. We look forward to meeting you.