Meetings
Meetings are held on the third Wednesday of every month from
January to June, and again in September and October.
The location for the meetings is Meeting Room A or B in the
Greenboro Community Centre (co-housed with Greenboro District
Library), 363 Lorry Greenberg Drive (situated between Hunt Club Road
and Conroy Road), Ottawa.
View Map
7:00 to 7:30 pm - Meet and Greet
7:30 to 9:00 pm - Program
9:00 to 9:30 pm - Mingling and pack-up
Non-members are invited to join us for a charge of $5.00 which may
be put towards a future membership.
2012 Meeting Schedule
January 18: Pond Profiles:
Speakers: Spokespersons for the Ermuth
(Ottawa) and Lamont (Braeside) ponds
This is our ever-popular annual evening
of profiles of selected water features. This year, instead of the
usual three profiles, we will be treated to presentations on two
major and out-of-the-ordinary ponds. One consists of the Canadian
Shield recreated in suburban Ottawa, with the installation of 1,000
tons of rock and other material, against a backdrop of a serious
pine forest. Roger Ermuth and Shannon Davis-Ermuth's natural mineral
swimming pond was built in 2011 by the Pond Clinic. It is a
jaw-dropping meshing of aesthetics and functionality. The other
profile will be the Lamont pond in Braeside, Ontario, an
installation by the Pond Boy, which started in 2010 and was
completed in 2011. It entails a 120-foot long stream on a twenty
degree slope, with several pools, ultimately emptying into the 18 by
25 foot main pond.
February 15: Literature and films in which water
gardens figure
At this time of year our own water features are a
distant memory, but while we are curled up with a view of the
snowdrifts concealing them, literature and films can transport us to
other ornamental ponds, near or far, exotic, ancient, or familiar.
Water gardens can pop up in all manner of literary and cinematic
genres, if even only as the place where the clue to the murder was
found (do you recall that 1974 film?). A librarian from the
Greenboro District Library will provide a tantalizing survey of
literature and films in which water gardens figure. If you have any
such titles to recommend to supplement the library's research,
please e
‐mail
Lesley at
program@ottawawatergardens.com References need not be anywhere
near as central to the plot as in Elizabeth Smart's short story "On
Supplanting Rampant Nettledom with a Wondrous Watery Realm", a
tonic to put any predator visit to one's pond in perspective.
March 21: The British
tradition of residential water gardening
Speaker: Richard Inchley, Richard Inchley Ponds and Aquaria, Kinburn,
ON (www.pondsandaquaria.ca)
British ex-pat and local pond industry fixture
Richard Inchley will deliver our 2012 international talk. North
American water garden design is enriched by influences from many
cultures with distinct contributions to the art and science of water
features. Previously we have heard about the contemporary water
elements at the Alnwick Garden in the UK; the harmony of water,
rocks, plants and architecture in Chinese Scholars' gardens; the influential Renaissance water
features of the Villa
D'Este in Tivoli, Italy; and water in Japanese landscape design.
With 25 years in the industry in the UK and Canada, Richard will
have much to draw on and much insight in talking about the tradition
of residential water gardens in his home country, where gardening is
a way of life.
April 18: Koi Farming
Speaker: Verne Gilkes, Moad Mountain Enterprise Koi and Pond
Supplies (and President, Mountain View Koi Club), Vankleek Hill, ON
We
have a pond fish-themed talk about every second year, of which this
will be our fourth talk, this time on koi farming. We may think of
our koi as being bred in Japan or Israel, but high quality koi are
also bred in North America, specifically New Jersey. Verne Gilkes
will draw on his decade of previous experience farming and raising
koi with the Quality Koi Company (qualitykoi.com), to expound on
getting them from the egg to your pond. He will also touch on
parasites to which koi are susceptible. At the end of his
discussion, we will have a better understanding of how some koi come
to be valued in the thousands of dollars.
May 16:
Algae,
moss, lichen & vascular (including aquatic) plant collections of the
National Herbarium of Canada
Speakers: Bryology (moss), lichenology,
phycology (algae) and vascular plant botanists
Location:
Canadian Museum of Nature, 240 McLeod Street
This is our annual plant-related
talk. The Canadian Museum of Nature's National Herbarium of Canada (http://nature.ca/en/research-collections/our-collections/botany-collection)
is only accessible by special arrangement. Their Vascular
Plant Collection, one
of the largest in Canada, consists of 575,000 specimens. The Lichen
Collection
includes the largest holdings of Canadian lichens in the
world, currently 111,500 catalogued specimens. Their Bryophyte
Collection
contains 225,000 moss specimens and about 25,000 hepatics. The Algae
Collection
(the National Phycology Collection of Canada) contains 65,000
specimens, including macro and microalgae. Find
out more, and access collection data online.
So we
can advise Herbarium staff of the number of participants in advance,
if you will be attending, please so indicate to
program@ottawawatergardens.com. There is no admission fee for
entry to the Herbarium.
June 20: TBA
July and August:
Pond Socials
September 19: TBA
October 17: TBA
Updated
Jan 5, 2012
