Bouquets to Art
Motivated by her admiration for the annual event at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, El Cerrito Garden Club member extraordinaire Barbara Post decided that this was a perfect activity for a Garden Club! Each year, during one of our spring club meetings, members have the opportunity to create floral and natural arrangements that are inspired by a selected piece of artwork. Some arrangements are elaborate and some are very simple! Everyone’s creativity is applauded and appreciated!! Here are some of our designs from past years.
Arbor Day 2026
The City of El Cerrito celebrated Arbor Day on Saturday, March 7 with a presentation at the El Cerrito Library, and then a tree planting at Cerrito Vista Park, organized by the El Cerrito Urban Forest Committee and Stephen Pree, the city’s arborist.
At the tree planting, our club president, Louise Moises, read a beautiful and moving poem she wrote and presented Stephen with a check for the club’s annual Arbor Day donation.
Stephen then gave a brief overview of planting the tree, a California native Flannel Bush (Fremontodendron californicum), which has beautiful large yellow flowers. The tree was somewhat root bound, and Stephen demonstrated how to do root pruning and root separation. And then we planted the tree!
Louise’s Arbor Day poem
When the world is too much with me,
I take myself to a garden, a park, an open space,
find a sheltering tree beneath which to rest.
Below its canopy I contemplate
the complexity of branches and leaves,
its willingness to send roots deep into the soil,
to grow strong and flourish, to weather
fire and storm. I marvel at the uniqueness
of each species, over 60,000 worldwide.
Whether evergreen or deciduous,
oak or palm, redwood or apple,
trees welcome everyone without judgement,
enrich our lives with their majesty.
In our busy day-to-day world,
trees are easy to overlook,
but today is their day, Arbor Day,
we come together to celebrate the tree.
Holiday gifts for Shields Nursing Home
It has been a longstanding annual project to make arrangements for the residents of a local nursing home. In the past, we made little floral arrangements that fit in yogurt containers, but that required that the residents had room on a tabletop to have a container with water in it!
We have now transitioned to making little holiday corsages for each resident, and our creative and artistic members have so much fun doing it!
Mini Succulent Wreaths
Our creative and hard-working Succulent Study Group made these darling mini wreaths, perfect for gifts or decoration.
