If this wintry weather is making you yearn for the days of summer when you can sink your feet into soft soil and plant bulbs and mulch and mold the green of your garden into your own personal paradise, then sign up right away for the semi-annual Middleburg Horticultural Symposium. This year's symposium, entitled "Garden Inspirations" will take place on Saturday, February 26 from 8:30-3:15 in the Sheila Johnson Theater at Hill School.

Sponsored by the Fauquier and Loudoun Garden Club, this all-day event will re-spark your green thumb and get your head back in the gardening game after a long winter's rest.

For an entrance fee of $80, you will be treated to four world-renowned gardening experts speaking on some important gardening topics for one hour each. For the fully-invested gardener, Ken Drews will be speaking on, "Gardening: A Passion for a Lifetime." If you have a vision for the garden you've always wanted, Renny Reynolds will tell you how to get it in his talk, "My Garden, My Dream." In a nod to the Southern heritage of many of Northern Virginia's gardeners, Chip Callaway's talk is titled, "Trials and Triumphs: Reflections of a Southern Gardener." And for the sophisticated gardener, Patrick Chasser will explain how to raise your garden to a new height of aestheticism in, "Design for the Senses."

A boxed lunch is also included in the entrance fee.

The money raised from the Symposium will go to the Fauquier and Loudoun Garden Club's Civic and Community Project Fund. Specifically, the money will be used for the maintenance and restoration of historic Goose Creek Bridge.

Attendees of the event tend to be professional and amateur horticulturalists, as well as everyday "enthusiastic gardeners," says chairman of the Symposium, Elaine Burden. Burden remarks, "Through the help of all the members of the club, this has proven to be a very successful and well-received educational event."

The Fauquier and Loudoun Garden Club is a member of both the Garden Club of America, as well as the Garden Club of Virginia. Since the club pays dues to both organizations, the Club fulfills its missions of aiding ecology, education, and preservation of gardens on both the national and the state level. It is the only garden club in the area that belongs to both organizations, and it currently counts fifty active members and ten associate members. The Fauquier and Loudoun Garden Club participates in the Historic Garden Club and has a partnership of sorts with the Leesburg Garden Club.

To be a member of the Fauquier and Loudoun Garden Club, one must have a garden, says Burden, but that is the only requirement. Anyone can join as long as they are willing to pay dues and occasionally host meetings in their house and garden. The club meets once a month and usually each meeting involves a program on anything from garden design to the propagation of horticulture. The club is also heavily involved in conservation and preservation of area gardens. In the past, it has been influential in the creation of bills in the Virginia state legislature having to do with land and garden preservation.

Burden says that the symposium is the club's only fundraiser. "We could have baked cookies and cakes and sold them to raise money, but we wanted to give our area an educational activity as a fundraiser," Burden comments. She also notes that advance ticket sales have been heavy, so people without reservations should check before arriving on Saturday.

As for Burden herself, she has been an active member of the Fauquier and Loudoun Garden Club for thirty years, which is also how long she has been married and lived in Virginia in her eighteenth century farmhouse. Her interest in gardening began when she went to the very horticultural symposium that she is now instrumental in running. Her garden which is a hodgepodge of "just about everything," including an herb garden, perennial borders, and a boxwood par terre, was featured in House and Garden Magazine in 1995. An eclectic and dedicated gardener herself, Elaine Burden is just the person to take charge of one of the premier gardening events to happen in Middleburg this year.

Call Elaine Burden at 687 6940 for information about symposium tickets.