Annual Herb & Gourd Fest

From Annual Herb & Gourd Fest Website:

The Michigan Gourd Society has once again been invited to share our love of gourds with guests of Meijer Gardens. Mark your calendars. Reserve the dates. Setup will begin Friday afternoon.

There is not a more enjoyable weekend anywhere that you can attend where you can share your gourd art and meet guests from all over the world in this magnificent setting. The Cafeteria is just a few feet away from where we will be located, and or course you can wander around and check out the beautiful gardens and sculpture park at any time. This truly is the venue you will not want to miss. We will post updates as they come along.

We will have our main tables where we will provide information about every aspect of gourds from growing thru harvest to finished art work and as people go around the information tables they can see art work from our Michigan Gourd Society members as well as gourds from different areas around the world. The displays have always generated great enthusiasm from the public as most people attending have never seen raw gourds. Perhaps the only finished gourds they seen are birdhouses. Their surprise at the final art work we show is wonderful to see and we hear comments like "that is really a gourd?" - "are you telling me this was once like that raw dirty gourd over there?" to "this looks really hard" - "where can I learn more?" ... and then they realize that any technique that can be done on wood can also be done on gourds - from simply staining to bring out the mottling on the gourd to painting, dying, carving, woodburning, coiling and weaving.

Throughout the two days we will have members demonstrating and showing some of the different techniques that they use on their gourds. We show examples of painting, pyrography, chip carving, filigree work, coiling, weaving just to name a few, and as in past years, we have vendors selling their creations of bowls, vases, sculptures and gourd jewelry.

We invite you to share your talents with our visitors who come from all over the United States and around the world. You will get to meet with other gourders from our area, swap ideas and partake in demonstrations to educate others about a whole new world that we open up before them.

Come and Join Us