PREMIUM
News

Garden club pioneer adores flowers

author avatar
Garden lovers: Cath Gattuso with her daughter Jeanette Grant. Photo by Gabriel Garcia

Being at Cobram and District Garden Club from the very start is a special thing.

Just ask 89-year-old Cath Gattuso who attended the Cobram and District Garden Club’s 30th birthday on Thursday, May 16.

For her, the club is a match made in heaven.

“I like gardens and I like the company,” she said.

Ms Gattuso said she had always had an appreciation for gardens and enjoyed strolling through them, admiring the various colours and different flowers.

Asked what flowers she loved the most, Ms Gattuso said orchids.

Ms Gattuso said being in gardens made her day feel better and it was great for her mental health.

“I feel free,” she said.

Like many avid gardeners, Ms Gattuso said her garden had changed over the years as her tastes changed.

Though growing flowers certainly brightens up one’s garden, for Ms Gattuso gardening has an economic benefit to it, as she, like many gardening enthusiasts, also grows vegetables.

“I grew tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, capsicums,” she said.

“Most of the vegetables.”

Like all vegetable growers, Ms Gattuso knows her veggies and said she would only plant certain vegetables when the season was right.

“In summer you grow one thing and then you winter you grow something else,” she said.

“Now we’re into broccoli.”

Such a vivid garden environment was a great experience for Ms Gattuso’s kids to grow up in, which was confirmed by her daughter Jeanette Grant.

“It was lovely to see all the colours of the flowers, and it was lovely, for her (Ms Gattuso) to have a vegetable garden, because what you produce you can eat,” Ms Grant said.

As for anyone thinking about joining the Cobram and District Garden Club, Ms Gattuso had only one reply.

“Do that,” she said.

For more information about joining the club see the group’s Facebook page at Cobram & District Garden Club | Facebook.