Garden Club helps nurture National Gallery
Garden Club member Faye Lippitt helps spruce up the National Gallery gardens
(CNS): The Garden Club of Grand Cayman (GCGC) has teamed with the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands (NGCI) and Growing Beauty Nursery to help maintain the community gardens surrounding the gallery’s three-acre site. At the first “gardening party” held in April, a group of Garden Club members assisted gallery staff and volunteers to replant, water seedlings, preserve nursery stock, and help with the general upkeep of the gardens, which feature native and indigenous flora.
The gardens, which were designed by local landscape architects Sandy Urquhart and Margaret Barwick in 2012, have flourished over the past three years. The club also donated plant material to the project.
National Gallery director Natalie Urquhart spoke of the importance of the project. “The gardens are an integral community space at NGCI and they are enjoyed daily by students, families and visitors. Given the size of the area it has been a real blessing to have support from the Garden Club,” she said.
“We look forward to building a strong relationship with the club and to working with them to maintain the gardens, themselves a work of ‘art’, in the long-term.”
The individual gardens are each named after donors to the NGCI Capital Project and include Deutsche Bank, John and Carol Owen, Tim Ridley, Henry and Eliza Harford, Desmond and Cathy Kinch, Linton and Polly Tibbetts, Barbara Palmer, Stewart and Dianne Siebens, Atlantic Star Ltd., and Butterfield, with initial plant donations from Arboretum Services Ltd (Dart), Growing Beauty and several private donors.
The Garden Club and National Gallery staff and volunteers plan to meet each quarter in the gallery gardens, and would welcome community participation.
For details on joining an upcoming NGCI gardening party email the National Gallery.
Category: Community
