The Valley of the Moon Garden Club has been around for more than 70 years. Its members are having fun while helping to bring joy and beauty to the community through their many gardens and stewardship efforts. We spoke with a couple of members of the club to find out what they’ve been up to recently, what new members might expect and where to find them out in the community.
Adrienne Love is co-president of the garden club and she’s been a member for more than two decades. She joined the club because she was new to the area and was looking for a way to meet more people in the community.
“It’s definitely a social club for sure and we have wonderful meetings,” she said. “It’s meet and greet, so you get to go and meet people and see your old friends and such.”
The club was founded in 1951 and Love said in those early days the club was mostly a bunch of farmers and people who had home gardens.
“Basically it was just a way for everyone to get together and share information,” she said. “It was based on the Farmers Almanac, the moons, the planting seasons, all that sort of stuff. So it really was a very old fashioned type of group and very much part of the agricultural community here in Sonoma, which is as we know, was what this whole area started out to be.”
Valley of the Moon Garden Club volunteer Cat Petru prunes a rose bush in the rose garden at Sonoma Plaza in Sonoma Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025. (Beth Schlanker / The Press Democrat)
Roses sit on a sundial in the rose garden at Sonoma Plaza in Sonoma Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025. (Beth Schlanker / The Press Democrat)
Renee Novich wears a Valley of the Moon Garden Club t-shirt that reads “Grateful Deadheaders” while volunteering in the rose garden at Sonoma Plaza in Sonoma Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025. (Beth Schlanker / The Press Democrat)
Valley of the Moon Garden Club Juna Carle (cq) trims off a wilting rose from a bush in the rose garden at Sonoma Plaza in Sonoma Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025. (Beth Schlanker / The Press Democrat)
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Valley of the Moon Garden Club volunteer Cat Petru prunes a rose bush in the rose garden at Sonoma Plaza in Sonoma Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025. (Beth Schlanker / The Press Democrat)
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A place to grow together
These days the Valley of the Moon Garden Club provides members a place for camaraderie as well as a place to learn good gardening practices. They’re putting in and maintaining gardens as well as looking after long established gardens throughout the area. They’re making it possible for local school children to have a healthy appreciation of all that a garden can bring and they’re providing local hospital patients with a serene and tranquil garden space. They’re helping to encourage healthy activity through their work to join local bike paths with pollinator plants located alongside them. These are just a few of the ways that this club has persevered through decades and a pandemic to bring a bit of joy to every life they touch.
The club hosts a speaker series during their monthly meetings with presentations about things like habitat gardens, pruning, foraging for mushrooms and even plants used within artwork.
They always have a table at Sonoma’s Tuesday Night Market where members are available to chat about the club and answer questions. They always have fun little giveaways like succulents or sachets of rose petals and lavender from the gardens they maintain.
The club hosts a float in Sonoma’s 4th of July Parade and Love said that’s one of her favorite garden club events.
“The club has participated in the Fourth of July parade probably since 1951,” she said. “(Vice President) Teddy Pender and myself and a bunch of volunteers have been building the floats for forever. The theme this year was ‘American Road Trip’ and so we were ‘American Rose Trip’ and it was a hoot.”
They’ve begun hosting their popular garden tours again from spring through the fall. Previously a favorite event, they ceased during COVID and Love said they’re really enjoying bringing them back.
They’ve showcased many gardens during the tours with a wide range of themes, including an Asian garden, one with succulents and cactuses and a wild garden that runs along a stream.
“It’s really fun for all of us to go and see what we’re all doing,” Love said. “You know, it’s human nature, we’re all nosy,” she said with a laugh. “We want to know what our neighbors are up to.”
Garden tours and sales
The next garden tour will be held on the east side of Sonoma Valley on Sept. 20. The exact place and time will be announced in The Press Democrat and the Sonoma Index-Tribune.
They also host two big plant sales during the year in the spring and fall. The next one will be held from 9 a.m. to noon on Oct. 11 at Altamira Elementary School. They’re big fundraisers for the nonprofit garden club and they make it enticing by having great deals.
“We sell a lot of plants for very reasonable prices,” Love said. “I’m sure there’ll be winter vegetables and there’s always a ton of succulents, lots of flowers and native plants. It’s a blast, it’s really so much fun.”
After the plant sales, Love said they donate all of the plants that don’t sell to Altamira and other local schools for their gardens. The club maintains the School Garden at Sassarini Elementary.
“It’s full of edibles and vegetables and the kids and the teachers all come and walk around the garden all during school hours,” she said.
Green Links Initiative
Another project that the garden club has been working on would make it safer for students to ride their bikes to school and for adults to feel inspired to ride more often. It’s called the Green Links Initiative and the club came up with the idea a couple of years ago.
The Green Links Initiative would link existing bike paths throughout the area.
“There are many bike paths but they sort of dead end and they don’t connect in any way,” Love said. “There has to be a way to get bike riders off that highway, to come all the way through Sonoma on safe bike paths that take them to the only high school in this area for instance,” she said.
Co-president Sedra Nathan has been organizing club members to work with the City of Sonoma on the project and they’ve been attending city council meetings for a year and a half as they help the city plan for the project.
Love refers to the proposed pathways as both “Green and Blue Links.” Her thought is that the Blue Links would follow along local creeks, with native pollinator gardens put in to create a healthy habitat for both humans and the local ecosystems.
She noted that the club has already put in and maintains quite a few pollinator gardens.
“One of the main ones is over at the Congregational Church and that one’s been going on for many, many years,” she said.
Community involvement
The club is very involved in the local community throughout the Valley of the Moon area.
“We’re really trying to partner with lots of other nonprofits, like the Sonoma Ecology Center, the California Releaf Network and the Sonoma Valley Women’s Club,” Love said. “We’re feeling that the more nonprofits that can sort of join and hold hands together, the more we can accomplish.”
Love noted that the garden club met at the Sonoma Valley Women’s Club when the garden club was first formed and they often partnered with them on projects. Now they’ve come full circle to partner with them again.
“The women’s club were the ones that really started all the planting on the plaza,” she said. “They planted an enormous amount of trees that are still there.”
Tending to the roses
These days you can find a cadre of garden club members working in the plaza to keep it looking beautiful. Theodore (Teddy) Pender is the vice president of the Valley of the Moon Garden Club and he oversees the work they do within the city of Sonoma. He spends his Sundays in the plaza, either attending to the roses or enjoying the live music with his crew.
Pender says his favorite work is deadheading roses. He and his crew are helping the city take care of the 250 roses in the plaza, including the rose garden. He coordinates the work with Brian Rowlands who cares for the roses and trees in the plaza as an employee with Sonoma Public Works, Parks Division. Rowlands is also a garden club board member.
“We have t-shirts that Brian made for all of us, and they’re very cool,” Pender said. “The back of it has basically the face of the Grateful Dead album with the skeleton and the roses, but it says Grateful Deadheaders.”
Pender has been strategic in the way he’s coordinated the volunteers for the deadheading of the plaza roses. At two o’clock on Sundays throughout the summer season, there’s a concert in the plaza amphitheater.
“I call this deadheading and music,” he said. “We show up at 1 o’clock, deadhead and then we can all go to the concert at two. So it’s a nice way to bring people in.”
“I’m on an internal kind of high volunteering for the city, working in the plaza, answering people’s questions and showing them how to do this work,” he said. “And now we’ve added something even a little more meaningful and deeper for all of us. We’re working with Sweetwater, which is a residence for people on the spectrum.”
Two of the Sweetwater Spectrum residents have begun joining them each Sunday. Rowlands takes one person and Pender takes the other and they work with them for as long as the two are able to continue.
“They’re learning and they’re smiling and laughing and having fun with us,” Pender said. “The program directors at Sweetwater are delighted that the two are out in the public working with us and learning and socializing. It’s a wonderful thing and it just makes it all so much more meaningful for me.”
Pender can also be found in the gardens, vineyard and orchard at Marcy House, the Sonoma Valley Historical Society Archives & Research Center. He also has a crew maintaining the Tranquility Garden at Sonoma Valley Hospital. Created by club members more than 20 years ago, it provides patients a bit of serenity within the peaceful garden.
The Italian Garden
About a year ago Pender had also begun noticing the Italian garden across the street from the Sebastiani Movie Theater was in need of some help. It felt synchronistic when he then discovered that the Sonoma Valley Women’s Club had also been discussing the idea of giving the Italian Garden some TLC.
Pender was tabling for the garden club in the nonprofit area at the Tuesday Farmers Market and the Women’s Club happened to be set up next to him.
“We started discussing this and realized that we both would like to do this,” Pender said. “We decided we would do it together as a collaborative effort.”
The women’s club landscape architect drew up plans and Rowlands is helping with organizing the foundational work. Pender said that most of the garden will be removed and although it’s a loss for historical reasons, the plants are all at the end of their life and therefore need to be replaced.
The Sonoma chapter of the Order Sons and Daughters of Italy in America had helped create the original garden in 1931. Another fortuitous conversation happened while tabling next to them at the Tuesday Market.
“They offered some of their people power to help us install the garden, so I think this will be a beautiful project,” Pender said. “It’s all Mediterranean plants like rosemary and lavender and hydrangeas. There will be new smaller Italian cypresses planted, new boxwood hedges and we’re going to have citrus in pots like gardens in Italy.”
Pender will again help organize garden club volunteers into a stewardship program for its eventual maintenance work like the watering and pruning. For now though his head is in the clouds with thoughts of the Italian garden.
“I love planning for this Italian garden,” he said. “I spend a lot of time there looking at it, sitting in it, reading about it, imagining what it will be, and that’s it for me. I’m a dreamer and I love those moments when my head is worrying with design.”
Everyone is welcome
We asked Pender if he felt the Valley of the Moon Garden Club was welcoming to men.
“Oh my goodness, it certainly is,” he said. “I thought all garden clubs were men and women. Little did I know, you know, it isn’t, but we’re not your grandmother’s garden club either. We are progressive and we’re out there and working on a lot of different projects.”
“Community service really is the key of what we do and that is so important,” Love said. “We have so many wonderful stewardships that are going on and I look forward to us doing even more.”
The Valley of the Moon Garden Club meets at 6:30 p.m. on the second Thursday of each month in Burlingame Hall, located in the First Congregational Church at 252 West Spain Street in Sonoma. Visit https://vom-garden-club.org for more information.
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