Theme
“Growing our knowledge through education, experience, experimentation, and sharing.”
Project
“Educating our members, our youth, and the public in gardening, horticulture, landscape design, environmental conservation, and the art of floral design through presentations, demonstrations, interactive workshops, and community projects.”
President’s Message
Hello fellow gardeners!
It is with a deep sense of honor that I take the reins of the presidency of CFGC. I know this is a big job and I hope that I represent you well. I look forward to getting to know more of our members and sharing our gardening experiences and knowledge with each other. I hope each club will invite me to one of your meetings or events during the two years of my presidency. I know that visiting clubs will be a highlight for me as I love learning about each club and its members, and I have truly enjoyed visiting several of the clubs during my time as Vice-President.
To tell you a little about myself, I’ll start with growing up on the east coast. We moved around a lot, but my extended family is from West Virginia, where my love for gardening started when I was a child, helping my family in the garden growing food that helped feed our family. I loved being in the garden, planting seeds that would soon grow into plants that graced our table. After graduation, I joined the Army, traveled the world, and met my husband, a Marine (don’t worry, I forgave him for that 😉). We have 3 daughters and sons-in-law, and 8 wonderful grandchildren. After my time in the military, I worked in many jobs related to training adults and implementing new technologies. I eventually started my own company of instructional designers, learning experience architects, software developers, and project/program managers, which I still run today. I enjoy learning new things, whether in the garden or on the computer.
I want to thank each and every member of CFGC, Inc. for the time, knowledge, and skills you have each donated to your garden clubs. Many have taken it a step further and extended that volunteerism to taking on officer and/or chair positions within your club, district, state, region or at the national level. At any of these levels, I know that it is often hard to carve out time from our busy schedules and I want you to know that I appreciate it! I always try to keep in mind that we are all volunteers. The officer and chair positions we fill are not jobs we are paid for with money. They are positions where volunteers graciously donate their time, knowledge, skills, and sometimes blood, sweat, and tears to help our organizations thrive! We could not do what we do without you. You are appreciated!
This is going to be a big year for us as we prepare to host the National Garden Clubs, Inc.’s annual conference at the Westin in Broomfield, Colorado, the first week of June, 2024. It’s an exciting time with members sharing their time, knowledge, and skills with us to plan and execute this conference while shining the light on Colorado and the Colorado Federation of Garden Clubs members. If you would like to volunteer, please reach out to me. We would love to hear from each of our members and have you participate in one way or another with the NGC conference. We are working on ways to make it more cost-effective for Colorado members to attend the conference in 2024. This will be a great opportunity for everyone to meet fellow gardeners from across the country, as well as some of our international members. We’ll have great speakers and workshops. It should be a great conference.
I appreciate those of you that volunteer your time and take on responsibilities in our organization. It takes all of us to make this organization thrive and grow. I look forward to working with you over the next two years to help expand our knowledge and share that knowledge with our members and the public.
Thank you for your time, your energy, and your talents. I hope that your gardens grow bountiful harvests!
Sincerely,
Victoria
Victoria Schmidt, CFGC President
Colorado Federation of Garden Clubs, Inc.