Local Garden Club Member Wins National Award

Dru Trahan sees her garden as a place for learning.

Nature’s lessons are played out on a stage that is composed of rooms. The shade room, tropical room and butterfly room are in her backyard.

The stage is decorated with props such as umbrellas, chimes and topiaries. The players on nature’s stage are the insects, birds, plants and flowers.

A walk through her garden often causes insects and birds to scatter.

“Sitting quietly and waiting is the key,” said Trahan. “For like shy children, they come out again and go about their daily business of living.”

Now, Trahan, a member of the Temple Terrace Garden Club, has won a National Garden Club award for a book she wrote, called “In My Garden…Everyday Miracles in Photographs.”

Through the NGC Awards program, garden club members receive recognition for outstanding achievement, according to the NGC. An NGC award is one of the highest honors a gardener can receive. Recognition creates pride and encourages members to further their efforts.

Trahan won her award in the Literary Horticulture Interest category, which honors the writer of a book, booklet, brochure, study course or other similar publication. NGC sponsors awards open to garden club members in all 50 states.

Trahan’s book is a collection of photographs, quotes and personal writings.

She said the book was designed to show that a garden can be:

• a place of calm, strength and spiritual renewal;
• a front row seat to everyday miracles;
• a vehicle for developing and exploring talents that we may not know exist; and
• a motivator that promotes others’ interest in gardening.

Trahan’s garden journey began with her first digital camera. Learning to use all of features of the camera allowed her creativity to blossom. This self-professed reluctant gardener has won three photography awards from the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs Inc. (FFGC).

Shutterfly.com is the vehicle Trahan used to create this award-winning book. While the text space is limited, it is user friendly.

Blurb.com is her next software challenge. It offers expanded text options and allows a simple cut and paste from Microsoft Word. It also has an option to publish the book for sale.

She has created other photo books, primarily of family members and trip memoires.

For Trahan, each visit to her garden is an opportunity to capture a bloom about to open, a snail on its daily sojourn, or a bird feeding her young. She said she tries to capture the ordinary as spectacular.

“That’s what I have learned it is,” she said.