During a recent club meeting, the topic jumped from stuffed animal donations and canned food collections to courtyard upgrades.

The first order of business was the club's desire to donate a park bench to the city of San Jose for the newly renovated Guadalupe River Parks and Gardens. Members reviewed who would be collecting canned goods for Second Harvest Food Bank and where stuffed animals that are being collected will be donated. One member asked about the garden in Good Samaritan Hospital that the group is interested in adopting in order to keep the courtyard area looking homey.

While the focus of the club is gardening, giving back to the community is a high priority for the nonprofit organization, which includes 41 women.

"I think it's important and all the women feel a connection to the city and want to help out," said Ruth Godfrey, president of the club.

An ongoing project is raising money for a scholarship for a local student who wants to study horticulture. In the past, the scholarship has gone to a Foothill-De Anza College student. The group is now in the process of redefining the guidelines for the scholarship.

The money is mainly raised by an annual plant sale the club organizes each spring. The club members bring plants from their gardens and sell them to the public. All the money goes toward the scholarship.

"I think it's interesting, it brings in a lot of different factors into the gardening part, I hadn't thought of things like that," said Janet Smith, who has been a member for nearly five years. "I always thought of gardening on a personal level and this opened up a whole new outlook on what gardeners can do in their community."

Once the discussion of the community service projects was over, the garden talk started.

Whether they were asking for advice about problem plants or suggesting ways to convert items in the home to tools for the garden, the women are eager to help and to learn.

These are a few of the reasons Smith has stayed in the club.

"We have such interesting, really smart women," Smith said. "There is a wide variety of interests and ages and it's nice that the older women and younger women get together. The younger women are usually in awe at what older women know."

Smith said she enjoys going to nurseries with her fellow garden club members because of how much the other women know.

For their meeting last month, some of the members went to the Sunset Magazine garden tour. The group viewed the gardens and then went on a tour of various nurseries.

"It's fun to go to a nursery with other gardeners," Smith said. "Husbands don't always want to look at nurseries and try to figure out what all the plants are."

Smith said she and her husband recently took out the deck in their back yard and have since been relandscaping. She values the knowledge and advice of the other club members as they help her figure out where to place certain plants based on how much sun or water they need.

The club also has a few master gardeners, people who have gone through a curriculum of classes at the university level. Master gardeners, once certified, are meant to spread their knowledge of horticulture to their communities.

The guest speaker at the last San Jose Garden Club, Nancy Garrison, was instrumental in bringing the master gardener program to Santa Clara County.

The club meets the second Tuesday of each month at the Fresh Choice restaurant at 5353 Almaden Expressway. Annual dues are $15. Those interested in joining can call 408.268.6682 for more information.