Gardening: Garden club shuts down, but Garden Expo lives on

As we say goodbye to 2024, Spokane gardeners are also saying goodbye to a venerable institution that has played a big role in promoting the joy of gardening in the region.

After 30 years of bringing gardeners together, The Inland Empire Gardeners are packing up their trowels and retiring to new endeavors.

The Inland Empire Gardeners, otherwise known as TIEG, first came on the scene in 1994 when a group of diehard gardeners met around a kitchen table to create a way for other gardeners to get together, share their experiences and have some fun. Soon after, ViAnn and Della Meyer and Chris Shepard joined, and the real fun began. “The Sisters” quickly brought a whole new level of creativity, imagination and frivolity to the group. It wasn’t long before ViAnn became president and announced that TIEG wasn’t going to be like “your mama’s garden club”.

Meetings were initially held at the Northeast Community Center but quickly outgrew that space and moved to bigger spaces until they landed at the CenterPlace Event Center in Spokane Valley, where attendance peaked at nearly 200 at each monthly meeting.

Gone was any hint of Robert’s Rules of Order and boring committee reports. They were replaced by well-known garden experts from across the globe who spoke on the latest trends in gardening, travel and storytelling. The meetings always ended with a door prize give away such that everyone went home with something.

In 1999, after a club bus trip to the Seattle Flower and Garden Show, one of the biggest garden shows in the country, the club wondered why Spokane couldn’t have its own garden show and the annual Spokane Garden Expo was created. The event held annually on the Spokane Community College campus became a mecca for gardeners from as far away as Canada, the West Coast and beyond. In 2024, 25,000 gardeners shopped with nearly 300 vendors plying all kinds of garden wares.

Fortunately, Garden Expo will live on after TIEG under new management that promises the show will continue to be an exciting place to shop for all things garden. So mark your calendars for May 10.

TIEG also created the annual Spokane in Bloom Garden Tour that took attendees into some of the best gardens in the city. People were able to see how each garden took advantage of its space and displayed the creativity of the gardener.

Sadly, TIEG’s demise is a sign of the times, ViAnn Meyer said.

“We couldn’t find as many volunteers as we needed to keep things running,” she said.

When the membership began to plateau in the late 2010s, the group realized that younger people weren’t volunteering as much. When COVID hit in 2020, the club couldn’t meet for two years, and even more volunteers dropped away.

So, to ViAnn, Della, Chris and all the members of TIEG who have brought much gardening pleasure to so many in Spokane, thank you. Thank you for your dedication, creativity and hilarious way of doing business. You made a difference in many lives.