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I also want to congratulate Ms. Evenlight Eagles (pictured) on receiving the Paul H. Broyhill Community Service Award from the Blowing Rock Civic Association at their annual meeting Tuesday evening. The Town of Blowing Rock is known for our beautiful flowers, and our community invests significant time and resources in that effort. Ms. Eagles sent a beautiful letter to BRCA and I thanking our community, and I am sharing it with all of you:
"Dear BRCA and Blowing Rock Community,
I want to express my appreciation for the wonderful and very unexpected Paul H. Broyhill Community Service Award from the Blowing Rock Civic Association on Tuesday. I do put a lot of time and love into our gardens, and it feels really good to have my efforts appreciated. So, I sincerely want to thank the BRCA for that!... and for encouraging people to be proactive members of our community.
I also want to thank my fellow garden club members… most definitely our garden volunteer crew, but also all of the other members who give of their time and effort to make the Blowing Rock Garden Club the fantastic organization that it is.
While I have the ear of a broad audience, I want to share a few thoughts along with some clarification regarding the gardens that I think is important for our community to understand.
The Memorial Gardens that our club is responsible for run the length of the park, around the 1888 Museum and down Memorial Lane. While we definitely do ALOT, we are not responsible for ALL of the gardens in Blowing Rock. We frequently get credit for all of it, so I wanted to clarify that for anyone who doesn’t know. Cory Cathcart, our town Landscape Director, and his crew are responsible for everything else on town property, including the baskets, islands, entrances, etc. They are always willing to hop in and help us whenever we need it too, and we appreciate them so much!
Also, the gardens we care for are about 85-90% perennial which means they come back each year. Of that, about half of those perennials are either straight natives or native cultivars, which are extremely important to a healthy ecology. My personal motivation to be involved with the BR gardens is not only to be involved in the beautification of our town, but also to share the importance of including native plants in our landscapes.
With the Memorial Gardens, we are showing our community and beyond it is possible to include natives in a garden…even in a show garden like ours. And specifically in our community, we are showcasing some of the native plants that work for us in Blowing Rock!
Hand in hand with promoting the natives comes educating about the issue of invasives. Please go to our website BlowingRockGardenClub.org for more information on our campaign to put an end to Japanese Knotweed in our town. It takes a village!
And while I believe there is a time for chemicals, I have to mention that we have been completely organic in the Memorial Gardens for the last 3 years.
I think it’s incredibly important to acknowledge the many hands and hearts that went into initially establishing the Memorial Gardens. Those folks were trailblazers and an excellent example of what people can do when they work together and focus their attention on the beauty they want to see in this world…and in their communities. I wish I could know the number of people who were inspired to become gardeners because of their gumption to act…and how many towns are now more beautiful than they used to be because they saw what happened in Blowing Rock when a few good people said, “Let’s do this!” I’m constantly inspired by the fact that the Memorial Gardens are even there in the first place.
And last but not least, I want to share that it’s true that I have been exposed to gardening my whole life. It started with helping my Nana and Granddad grow food and dahlias in the summers right here on Ransom Street where I live today. However, I actually “learned” to garden when I took on the position of Horticulture Chair for the club. We were in a tight spot and needed someone ASAP. I wasn’t sure if I was being brave or stupid, but I followed my heart and here we are.
I was excited and terrified and wondered at times if I was somehow going to manage to kill everything in the garden. So, I reached out to two wonderful and inspiring women who had held my position in the past, Lynn Hubbard-Barbour and Ineke Thomas, to see if they would be willing to advise me as needed. And of course they were. Lynn gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten in my life.
While I don’t remember her exact words, she basically told me that she didn’t know what she was doing when she started either. She said getting in there and doing the work was how I was going to learn. And she told me not to be afraid of making mistakes…that the fact that I was showing up to take the position was enough. So there…I laugh as I write this, but whatever her actual words were, served as a big catalyst for change for me. I felt more prepared to walk into the world with my trowel in hand and do whatever damage I was inevitably going to do, because what mattered more was that I was intent on something beautiful coming of it.
I share all this because I see so many people look at our gardens and think or even say out loud “I’m not a gardener… I could never do that”. If they only knew how many plants have died in that very garden. So, from my heart of hearts, if you want to garden, I invite you to start if you haven’t already. Go to a nursery (Mustard Seed, perhaps…) and ask to see the natives! I sincerely believe gardening has the potential to heal individuals, communities and the world.
I feel blessed to be a part of this amazing community. Thanks again to BRCA for the award, all BRGC members, past and present, for the love and support and the opportunity to learn to garden, to everyone in the community for all your congratulations, to all the folks who have shared their appreciation and support for the gardens and our volunteers all along the way, and also to all the other folks in town who put so much love and care into all the other gardens that make Blowing Rock so beautiful.
Oh! And come join us for our Wildflower BINGO Fundraiser this September 9th!
All my love,
Evenlight Eagles"
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