4H Canada Awards - Floral Centerpiece Fun-raiser

 

Photo by Lani Holland at the NAC

On Monday Feb 10 2020, the National 4H Leadership Awards Banquet was held at the NAC in Ottawa.

Pakenham Hort was commissioned to prepare the floral centerpieces for the banquet. 

All thirty eight of them. Read how we managed this mini project.

On January 23 we were contacted to see if we were interested in making the centerpieces for this gala event. Sherryl Smith quickly organized the floral designers and within one week, the team had developed two potential designs.

The final selection was made by 4H Canada and incorporated an Oxalis potted plant surrounded by a natural grapevine wreath covered in asparagus fern, pine, cedar and four white flower clusters.

With less than ten days before the event, the designers were challenged to go outdoors, harvest frozen grapevines, thaw it and assemble into 38 base pieces.

Sherryl ordered the Oxalis plants from Acanthus in Almonte and organized the white flowers from Mitchell's Independent Grocers in Carleton Place.

Beautiful Oxalis - 3 leaved clover very close to the 4H Logo

Judy McGrath, Lani Holland, Toby Barratt, Sandy Black, Janice Connolly, Lori Ray and Sherryl Smith would meet the day before the banquet and assemble the wreaths.

The raw ingredients	Sherryl Smith, Toby Barratt and Janice Connolly prepping
Our first test arrangement	Janice Connolly, Toby Barratt and Sandy Black hard at work

As the morning progressed, so did the arrangements.....

Judy, Lani, Lori, Janice, Toby and Sandy	Starting to accumulate the wreath bases
Lani and Judy adding greenery and flowers to grapevine	Hard at it!

 So the morning passes quickly; thirty eight bases are completed and Sherryl serves the team a delicious lunch for all our hard work.
What a treat to work with fresh plant material when it was minus 25 outside that morning.

Monday afternoon arrives - now Sherryl and her husband Bob need to transport 38 wreath bases to the NAC - no easy task, but with careful planning they were up to the challenge.

Luckily the Oxalis is in boxes!!

Lani arrived to take photos and help with setup	Exactly like we imagined them

And that is how a small dedicated team of volunteers came together to make a bit of money for their club, but mostly to have a great deal of FUN.

Many thanks to 4H Canada for the wonderful opportunity.

Blog written by Lori Ray
Photos by Lani Holland/Sherryl Smith/Lori Ray