On Wednesday,August 20, 6:30-8 pm, FCGN will visit two next-door properties in Penfield, the gardens of Carol and David Southby and their neighbors Cindy Reiss and Michael Buczko. Both couples share a passion for native plantings, but their gardening styles offer different and delightful executions.

FCGN visited the superb Brighton gardens of Jerry and Karen Kral on Thursday, July 17, 6:30-8 pm. We hardly need to describe them, as Jerry’s must be the most-visited garden in our area. But it seems to only get better and better. The garden is over thirty years in the making, has over a half mile of pathways through almost an acre of gardens, and over 700 taxa of plants.

FCGN members and guests enjoyed a beautiful evening on June 25, 2025 in the Penfield gardens of Catherine Fowler and Robert Salmon. Their design is very creative, lush and unusual, and yet favoring native plants.

FCGN enjoyed a well-attended—and lovely!—evening soiree on May 27, 2025 in Webster visiting the gardens of Matt Szostak. Matt is an experienced plantsman who has been cultivating his 5/8-acre landscape with perennials, shrubs, and trees for 27 years.

FCGN members enjoyed a walk among trees and wildflowers on Friday, May 2, 2025 at one of our favorite spring flower sites, Breese Park in West Henrietta. The park was particularly exceptional for its fields of bluebells, and we timed the walk to coincide with the bluebells and other wildflowers—not to mention the rain that threatened!

Thanks to everyone who came to the Flower City Garden Network’s annual Seed and Houseplant Swap, held on February 1, 2025 at the Penfield Recreation Center. We hope you had as much fun as we did! Thanks to Christine Froehlich; her interesting and informative talk, Loosen Up Your Landscape Style: Melding the Wild and the Tamed with Native Plants presented lots of inspiration for a more satisfying, more relaxed garden—and gardener. And thank you to Carol Southby for Gardens of Philadelphia, Some Lesser-known Gems – we learned about that (relatively nearby) area’s wealth of varied and fascinating public gardens.

FCGN members were treated to a guided tour of the Webster Arboretum on Wednesday, September 25, 2025. The Arboretum is a 40-acre community park including a number of trails, specimen trees, perennial gardens, an herb garden, a Dennis Burns-designed conifer hill, a pond and stream, two gazebos, and more.

FCGN's event at Norbut Solar Farms on August 28, 2024 was great fun and very interesting. The wood-fired pizza and salads were delicious, and it was a treat to enjoy a meal together. The farm is fascinating as well as beautiful, and staff there did a bang-up job of leading tours of the facilities and explaining the environmental, sustainable and community emphasis of their operations.

On Wednesday, August 7, 2024, 6:30-8 pm, the Flower City Garden Network visited Tin Win’s garden in Penfield, NY. Tin’s attractive front yard contains beds with perennials and ornamental trees and shrubs, while the back yard is varied, peaceful, and inviting with Tin’s faborite ornamentals trees, hydrangeas, and perennials.

Those of us who got to visit Tim Boebel’s garden in Bloomfield, NY, on July 25th & 30th were privileged to take in a sight seldom seen – a yard just full of so many beautiful plants in bloom. And what could be prettier than a garden of billowing shrubs in pink, blue and purple (H. macrophylla and serrata), along with the white of H. paniculatas and arborescens? Tim grows a large number of different cultivars and several species of Hydrangea, some quite rare.

On Wednesday, July 17, 2024, members and guests of the Flower City Garden Network visited the always-delightful Brighton, NY garden of Jerry Kral. A top garden in the Rochester area, Jerry’s garden is large and multilayered, and he uses the most choice and unusual plants in a seamless and artful way so that every view is a beautiful combination of trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals.

If you were lucky enough to get to Susan Buckner’s garden in Scottsville, NY on June 11, 2024, wasn’t it wonderful? The word that kept coming up was amazing. So many gorgeous plants, some old favorites and many unusual varieties…

Our get-together in Annee Reynolds’s garden in Webster, NY on May 21, 2024 was quite delightful. It was very well attended, and indeed the landscape was a fairyland…

Our wildflower walk at Ganargua Creek Meadow Preserve in Macedon, NY on Friday, April 26, 2024, was delightful. The weather was cool but sunny and the woodland was looking fresh from the spring rains.

The Flower City Garden Network was so pleased with how our annual swap went on January 27, 2024. Attendance was great, with lots of friends–old and new–interested in getting together to talk about gardening and to swap some great finds.