What Members Get from Joining ORG&HPS

Updated

Joining the Ontario Rock Garden & Hardy Plant Society (ORG&HPS) gives you access to recorded meeting content in a members-only area, a monthly Members Showcase where you can present your own garden experience, and the annual Seedex seed exchange. These benefits are described on the society's home page; the site does not publish membership fees or a full list of member privileges, so treat the points below as what the page documents rather than a complete membership contract.

Recorded talks and Zoom meetings

The most concrete member benefit on the page is video access. Recordings of all Zoom meetings are posted within a week of the meeting, and viewing them requires you to be logged in. The same applies to specific presentation videos: Paul Gellatly's talk "Unlocking the Potential: Big Ideas for Small Gardens" was made available on YouTube but scheduled to be taken down on Oct 26 at the speaker's request, with the video accessible under "Members Only" after logging in.

If you join, the practical workflow is:

  1. Create or receive a member account on onrockgarden.com.
  2. Log in before looking for meeting content.
  3. Look for Meeting Videos under the "Members Only" section.

The expected result is on-demand access to talks you missed, plus a one-week turnaround on new Zoom recordings. The common snag is forgetting to log in — the videos are not visible to anonymous visitors, and the page explicitly notes the login requirement each time it mentions recordings.

Members Showcase: a slot to present

ORG&HPS features members' 20-minute presentations at most monthly meetings in the Members Showcase. The page invites members to share insights and experiences from their own gardens or gardens they have visited, across a wide range of horticultural subjects — from local flora to exotic plants. Suggested topics include native plants, starting seeds, bulbs in spring or fall, and summer garden photo highlights.

A concrete example of how this works: the November 8 showcase will describe some of the seeds offered in that year's Seedex, with members asked to send photos of their Seedex contributions so they can be shared during the session, and Virginia Hildebrandt providing plant descriptions and reasons members should consider growing them. That illustrates the format — member photos plus a short narrated segment — rather than a formal lecture.

If you want to present, the page's implied path is to prepare a 20-minute talk and contact the society (the showcase invitation directs members to get in touch; the Seedex photo request uses a contact email that the site displays only with JavaScript enabled). The main constraint is the 20-minute length and the expectation that content comes from your own garden observations.

Seedex seed exchange

The page confirms that Seedex is an annual seed exchange with member contributions, and that the November 8 Members Showcase will feature a description of some of the seeds being offered that year. It does not state eligibility rules, ordering windows, or costs, so the safe reading is: Seedex is a member activity tied to the society's meeting calendar, and details are communicated to members rather than published on the home page.

Meeting cadence and speakers

Membership also connects you to the monthly meeting program. The page lists, for example, a November 8, 2026 meeting presentation by Andrew Osyany, "A Taste of the Flora of Utah" — Osyany is a founding member who traveled to Western mountains roughly once a year from 1966 to about 2010. Talks like this are the content that later appears in the members-only video archive, so the meeting schedule and the recording library are two views of the same benefit.

Is it worth joining?

What you want Does membership deliver, per the page?
Watch missed talks on demand Yes — recordings posted within a week, login required
Present your own garden experience Yes — 20-minute Members Showcase slots at most meetings
Exchange seeds with other growers Yes — annual Seedex, details to members
See costs and full benefits before joining Not documented on the home page

The page supports a clear decision for anyone who cannot attend meetings in person or who wants a reason to document and present their garden: the recorded archive and the showcase slot are real, described benefits. It does not publish pricing, so if cost is your deciding factor, ask the society directly before joining rather than assuming the site's silence means free access.