FOR 65 years the Broken Hill Floral Art Club has met to learn and practise the art of floral arranging.
Though the club’s members have declined over the years from over 50 members in the early days to three main members today, member Pauline Rowlands said the social benefits of the club, along with their fundraising efforts, still make the club’s existence worthwhile.
“We just do what we can now,” she said. “We still enjoy flowers.”
For Mother’s Day, club members gathered this week to arrange fresh and silk flowers to sell at the Plaza on Saturday, as part of their largest annual fundraiser.
Barbara Gray said the fresh flowers come from members’ gardens.
“We all grow flowers, though this year we’ve been having trouble,” she said.
“We pick them all from our gardens and make them up all day on Friday, and then we go to the Westside Plaza to sell them on Saturday morning.”
The club raises money for a range of charities and causes, but prefer to donate locally when possible.
“We fundraise and it goes into our general, and then we’ll have a meeting and decide who we’d like to donate to,” Ms Gray said.
“We’ve donated to the hospital kiosk, meals on wheels and local families in need.”
Other than a small amount of money going towards insurance, running costs of the club and supplies, all money raised by the sale of the clubs flowers is donated.
Ms Gray and Ms Rowlands both said they joined the club originally for their love of flowers and arranging, but spending time together has become a big part of the experience .
“We used to make an arrangement, have a cup of tea and analyse there arrangements, a couple of hours,” Ms Rowlands said.
“But now we have a full day. We come and do our arrangements, sit down, have our meeting, have lunch.”
Ms Rowlands has been in the club for 58 years, and said a mix of the population of Broken Hill having decreased and different interests in the younger generations has led to the club becoming so small.
“People are interested in different things,” she said.
“Things have changed over the years, but we’ll just continue doing what we’re doing now.”
Members of the Broken Hill Floral Art Club will be selling their silk and fresh flower arrangements for Mother’s Day on Saturday morning from 7.30am until about 12pm at the Westside Plaza.
