Gina Jorgan gave an informative and entertaining presentation at the Destin Garden Club's June meeting.
Jogan’s resume is long and filled with accolades celebrating her accomplishments, including a career as an instructor of design and flower show procedure at the National Horticultural Club’s Flower Show School since 2002, NGC, certified master flower show judge, gardening consultant, and landscape design (honorary master in both fields).
She is a presenter for Creative Floral Arrangers of America and served as District 1 Director from 2003 to 2005. She has also been a panelist for the Pensacola Flower Show, Florida Federation of Garden Clubs, Floral Designer of the Year winner, and the Pensacola Federation of Garden Clubs, Gardener of the Year.
Jorgan is a graduate of Florida State University and her designs have been published in articles, magazines, calendars and online. She also enjoys reading, traveling, sewing, quilting and spending time with her grandchildren.
“I love what I do and I want to share that joy with others, so I try to offer as many programs as possible and say yes to every invitation that fits into my schedule,” Jogan said.
She visited the Destin Club to show off three floral designs using horticultural plants from her own garden, and with the baskets placed in front of her, Jorgan began to work her magic.
“The piece will be mainly green with a few floral touches at the end,” Jogan said.
She started with cedar, which drapes over either end of the basket. She added Florida anise, which has a licorice-like scent when crushed, and added more greenery with forsythia, wild blueberries, podocarpus, and fruiting gardenias. She added nandina for a delicate, lacy feel. Jorgan took five cast-iron leaves and folded them together to create a flower, placing it slightly off-center on the left side.
As the basket filled, there was space to add loropetalum, tiny azalea leaves, and dwarf sedges. To finish off the arrangement, Jorgan placed five white crape myrtle flowers.
Next comes a cascading arrangement in a tall vase. The arrangement flows very low and to the side, not upwards. Jorgan starts with small, white-flowering weegeria and Boston ferns, with slightly draped, outward-jutting foliage. The center is filled with pieces of wax myrtle, cedar, and variegated pittosporum.
The final arrangement is asymmetrical, with tall ella egret branches woven together to create height, a Boston fern at the bottom and green peace lilies arranged outwards and upwards to fill in the perimeter.
The Destin Garden Club's next meeting will be Sept. 17 at the Destin Library.
In other news: The Destin Garden Club awarded a $1,000 scholarship to Casey McClain, a graduate with a degree in plant science and a minor in health studies with a 3.6 GPA, who plans to start a business designing and building edible plants on clients' land.
The Destin Library's Japanese Garden is complete. With the addition of a moon gate and a 446-pound rock that looks like it came from outer space, it's very impressive. It's a wonderful addition to the City of Destin. Garden Club member Velda Dougherty came up with the idea for the Japanese Garden from the beginning when she had nothing but soil and her vision of what it would become. President Ann Collins presented Dougherty with the award with a bottle of liqueur called Midori, which means “green” in Japanese.
This column was provided by Destin Garden Club member Laura Hall.
