Local Club Site - Really appreciate feedback!

Site URL: http://www.gardenclubofoldgreenwich.org

Hi,

I am redesigning the website for my local garden club. We are quite active in the community and the homepage is intended to build community awareness about us. I don't want to be responsible for 100% of the content, so I have embedded a sample google slideshow and calendar. The calendar updates automatically and it will be easy for me to change the slideshow when someone creates a new one. 

The embedded slideshow has a dark border along the left and bottom and I cannot get rid of it. Also, if anyone knows how to change the font, sizes and colors of an embedded google calendar, please let me know! We need to use google calendar because it's easy and several computer-phobic people need to be able to edit it. 

I have disabled the password on the Members page. Most of the secondary navigation are for me to reference while I am working on the revamp. 

Feel free to comment on the  design - I am not sensitive. Do you think that it's a good homepage for residents who are curious about us?

Thanks so much. I did limit the pallet (I got rid of most of the blue, but I cannot do anything about the blue on the calendar (I call it "Google blue,") and I'm stuck with the logo colors.

I have looked at a lot of websites and design articles. There are a lot of plant "based" websites that were clearly designed by people who know nothing about them. The very spare aesthetic with bright graphics just doesn't work for us. The main objective is to find a way to quickly communicate what we are doing to people who are curious about us but couldn't be bothered reading the newsletter (we don't even care about donations.)

Despite the fact that we need to change the images regularly, I don't want to rehaul it ever couple of years. Can you be more specific about what you mean about a "government vibe?"  That's definitely not the impression we want.

Hi charbar,

I review your website.
Garden is a beautiful place with green plans, flowers, nature. 
I don't see Garden images on the website.
I don't see enough visuals to understand your story. 
I am Visual UX Designer. My goal to tell the story through the visuals and images.
You have a beautiful subject to tell the story.

You can use Unsplash Free images to make your website alive: 
https://unsplash.com/s/photos/garden

I  will have a large photographs of butterflies https://unsplash.com/photos/Pw7qpVN9h-w on https://www.gardenclubofoldgreenwich.org/butterfly-garden

I suggest using web banners beautiful gardens images to tell the story. 

When I visit your home page, I see the story about the senior center but not about garden senior community.
I suggest using one color for the website design.
I suggest to change home page layout from two-column layout to one column layout home page.

Squarespace 7.1 is giving you all tolls  for design professional and beautiful website to tell story about seniors, old people who in love with gardening and passionate to preserve the nature. Gardening is healing arts. 

Thanks - I agree and I am trying to add in images, but the club has decided to only use our own images and they are- well, we are trying.  Everyone is used to taking group shots for newsletters and the local papers and I am trying to find a nice way to let people know that they aren't good for a website. We have a few really exceptional photographers in the club and I will try to recruit them. 

I will definitely give your suggestions to the heads of our different gardens. I really appreciate the way you phrased it and I hope it will inspire people to photograph the beauty of the gardens.  

You have inspired me to create a competition among our members for beautiful images of our gardens to use for this. Expressing the theme of visuals to tell our story will give us a framework to decide which pictures to use and what we should go out and get. 

thanks!

I think your website looks right for your audience. It made me curious to look at a few pages and see what you do. If I lived near by I would even considering contacting you re joining.

A few design comments: I found the shadowed text on some pages difficult to read and some of your images weren't really good enough quality to be enlarged to the size of my computer screen. Might need to consider image quality going forward. But I liked that the photos were of your activities.

All the best.