The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Garden club hosts holiday boxwood workshop
The Avon-on-the-Lake Garden Club hosted a boxwood Christmas tree workshop Dec. 5 at the city’s Old Firehouse Community Center.
The workshop served as the club’s final event of the holiday season.
Using Oasis floral foam, the garden club helped residents to create their own miniature living Christmas trees using boxwood and other festive plants.
Avon Lake’s Bobbe Rudge is a member of the Avon-onthe-Lake Garden Club, and helped to host the event.
The workshop sold out within days of its initial announcement, and the final turnout was incredible, Rudge said.
“I’m thrilled,” she said. “We filled, and then we added a few more.”
Rudge said 23 people participated in the workshop.
Over 40 years at her Rocky River business, known as Country Garden, Rudge became a professional at putting together boxwood trees.
She said she can put together a boxwood tree in about 20 minutes due to her decades of experience.
Her team of four at the Avon-on-the-Lake Garden Club now hope to pass that knowledge to others.
“I’ve done hundreds of these trees, because I’ve done many, many workshops when I had my business,” Rudge said.
She was a large part of the mind behind the club’s most recent service project with Avon Lake High School.
Using Christmas trees in holiday-themed teacups, the club helped to spread portable Christmases to those at Towne Center Main Street Care in Avon Lake.
Following that project, Rudge wanted to follow up with a public workshop using the extra boxwood she
had.
With over 100 pounds of the foliage from the Pacific
Northwest in her garage, she set out to use the rest of the plants.
“What (the workshop participants) get is basically a kit, and then when they leave, they’ll take anything that’s left,” Rudge said. “Take them home, and they can do tiny ones, or they can, stick them in some Oasis.”
The boxwood trees, along with the floral foam, are environmentally-friendly and totally biodegradable, she said.
“You don’t have to go out and buy something plastic to put on your table,” Rudge said. “Here you’ve got the real thing, (and) these will last for a couple of months.”
The garden club team was happy to spread more holiday cheer in the Avon and Avon Lake area, she said.
Most of all, Rudge said she was excited to hear that the workshop participants were having fun.
“You can tell they’re all having fun, just by the level of sound in the room,” she said. “I have done a number of these over the years.
“I really am thrilled (with the turnout).”