GALVESTON — The Galveston Garden Club’s garden party and event known as the Powhatan Pansy Potpourri at the 1847 Powhatan House has become a county tradition.
It celebrates its 20th year this month. The public following of those “who would not miss purchasing pansies from the garden club” has become legend. Why? Simply, the pansies are touted as “the best in Texas” and grown especially for the garden club.
The pansy series are selected each year, and the grower nurtures the growing pansy pods for the event. The Thursday before Thanksgiving, when the weather is cooler, people pick up their prepaid reserve selections of pansy flats that have been in the grower’s hands until the day before delivery to Galveston.
The Galveston Garden Club has been in service to Galveston since 1938. It began selling caladium bulbs that year, making them available to the public from the “caladium growing capital of America” at Lake Placid, Fla.
Twenty years ago, an event was noticed in Austin, and I, as 1847 Powhatan House chairman and officer, brought the idea to Galveston. The club members wanted a fall event, as they have had for years with the spring caladium event.
Their idea was to continue with pansy plantings when caladiums died back with the seasonal first northers. To perpetuate “beautiful gardens” during the gray, colorless days of fall, winter, and spring with rain, fog and cold months of declined gardens, the pansy project took off.
The primary goal was to cheer area residents and the business community, and promote Galveston’s attractiveness and coastal island charm for visitors and Winter Texans. For 20 years, the organization has been dedicated to the belief that being scenically beautiful is the key element for beckoning and capturing the return of tourists, conventions and visitors.
Since 1989, the pansy sales have been widely successful because of the ease of planting and the instant results in creating brilliant landscape color during the long foggy seasons on the coast. It has been estimated that more than 400,000 pansy plants have been planted by the event.
Planted in the sun in rich friable soil with a measure of time release fertilizer, pansies produce abundant bright flowers and therapeutic views of nodding, wind-tossed blossoms in pots or gardens from November through June. Water sprinklings, when the air turns warm, prolong blooming. The Colossus, Matrix and Delta Series offered are hybridized to tolerate heat.
Order forms are in many locations on the Island, and in Texas City, Dickinson and Santa Fe areas. No telephone orders are accepted.
Deadline for ordering is 7 p.m. Friday. Pansy pickup is Nov. 19 between noon and 6 p.m. Flats are $22. The premium grower’s fertilizer that services a flat of pansies will be available. For information, call 409-763-0077.
Evangeline Whorton is vice president for ways and means of the Galveston Garden Club and is founder and chairman of the Powhatan Pansy Potpourri.
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