Helen Kirkman

Helen has had a passion for gardening since she was a child. She has wonderful memories of playing under a giant canopy of fruit trees while watching her grandma hoe her rows of vegetables nearby. For 50 years, in every state and climate in which her family and she have lived, they have never been without a garden.

Over the years, Helen has taken horticulture courses at USU, but most of her education has come from reading gardening books, as well as plant and seed catalogs typically in winter, then out in the garden for trial and error each growing season. She never fails to be amazed and delighted to see a seed she has planted germinate and grow into a beautiful, healthy plant. Every spring she can’t wait to start her seedlings, and every fall the freeze comes too soon.

Over the past 10 years, Helen has enjoyed educating herself by visiting many botanical gardens in Utah, Nebraska, Illinois, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Washington, Iowa, California, and Vancouver Island, and many others too numerous to mention. She joined the Cache Garden Club in the spring of 2023 and has enjoyed her experience since then in helping to organize and coordinate both monthly garden club meetings as well as garden walks and tours during the growing season throughout communities in Cache Valley.

Her own tours and walks through gardens across the country have served to inspire her as she continues to plan and organize local excursions into the gardening lives of Cache Valley community members.