May 11, 2015

What will you be doing on Father's Day weekend?

Canada’s Celebration of Gardens
June 19, 20 & 21, 2015

 
Kicking off with National Garden Day, always the Friday before Father’s Day, Garden Days is a three-day celebration that takes place over the Father’s Day weekend.  The program’s objective is to draw attention to our cultural garden landscape, history and innovations and to underscore the importance of public and private gardens, the values of home gardening and the promotion of environmental stewardship.
 
Register your Garden Days Activity or Promotion
To celebrate Garden Days, we invite you to organize something special at your Garden, Garden Centre or in your community.  It could be as simple as free or reduced-price admission to your garden, a 15% discount in your shop or garden centre, a complimentary cup of coffee at your café, or a special event you’d like to hold over the Father’s Day weekend –– it’s entirely up to you. 
 
Whatever you decide to do, we invite you to register your activity on www.gardendays.ca.  It’s as simple as clicking on the ‘Register Your Activity’ button and inputting your Garden Days activity information. 
 
As soon as you register your activity, we’ll send you the Garden Days Official Activity logo, which you can use in promotions of your activity.
 
Program of Activities
There will be Garden Days activities and events held across the country in celebration of Canada’s National Garden Day.
 
This three-day program of activities and events targets gardening enthusiasts, families, schools and tourists alike. Garden Days is an opportunity for Canadians to get outside in their own garden, visit their favourite public garden, stop in at their local garden centre or travel to a nearby garden destination to enjoy their favorite experience.

The program of activities and events will be featured on www.gardendays.ca / www.lesjourneesdujardins.ca
 
Marketing and Communications
Garden Days will be supported by a vibrant national Public Relations campaign managed by Enterprise Canada, and Social Media campaign managed by Tara Nolan of the Canadian Garden Council.  Please take every opportunity to connect your Garden Days activity to our Social Media outreach at Facebook.com/CanadianGardenCouncil and Twitter @CanadasGardens
 
Promotions
Canada’s Garden Street Contest - Sponsored by Home Hardware
We want to know all about Canada’s most outstanding Garden Street.  The public will be invited to visit the gardendays.ca website to enter the contest and tell us how gardens, be they public or private, contribute to the quality of life and the aesthetic of their street and neighbourhood.  The prize: $1,000 worth of Mark’s Choice Lawn and Garden Products from Home Hardware and the ‘bragging rights’ of being named Canada’s Garden Street for 2015.
Contest closes at midnight, June 15, 2015.  Winner will be announced via a nationally distributed media release and on the gardendays.ca website on National Garden Day, June 19, 2015.
 The Canada’s Garden Street Contest is sponsored by Home Hardware and supported by Communities in Bloom.
 
Municipal Garden Proclamations
In collaboration with Communities in Bloom, cities across the country will be invited to implement their own Official Garden Day Proclamation.
 
National and Regional Spokespeople
As well as a vibrant social media campaign geared to sending the public to the gardendays.ca website to find out about Garden Days activities in their neighbourhood, we’ve got a terrific roster of media spokespeople on board to ‘talk up’ your event.
 
Mark Cullen and Larry Hodgson are the English and French, respectively, national Spokespeople for Garden Days.
 
Additionally, we have provincial spokespeople that you will no doubt recognize, who will be promoting Garden Days and maybe even your specific event, as follows:  Brian Minter, British Columbia; Colleen Zacharias, Manitoba; t.b.c., Saskatchewan; t.b.c., Alberta; Denis Flanagan, Ontario; Albert Mondar, Québec; Niki Jabbour, Maritimes and Todd Boland, Newfoundland & Labrador.
 
Be sure to connect with your provincial spokesperson to let them know all about your Garden Days activity.  You can do this by visiting the home page of www.gardendays.ca and clicking on the name of your provincial spokesperson.
 
Garden Days is a joyful country-wide celebration of the vital role that gardens and gardening play in our communities and our lives.
 
We hope you’ll get involved!
 
Garden Days is organized by:
Canadian Garden Council

Supported by:
Canadian Nursery Landscape Association and all its provincial members and Garden Centre members
Communities in Bloom
BC Garden Tourism Coalition
Ontario Garden Tourism Coalition
Quebec Garden Association

Sponsored by:
Home Hardware
VIA Rail Canada
Enterprise Canada
Baxter Travel Media
Mark’s Choice