2019 GCA Honorary Members Announced
Meet these four outstanding individuals.

In recognition of their achievements in furtherance of the ideals of the GCA, four outstanding individuals were welcomed as new honorary members of The Garden Club of America at its May 17 -19 annual meeting in Boston. They are Dr. Richard Olsen, Director of the U.S. National Arboretum; William Cullina, President and CEO of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens; Gordon Hayward, a garden designer, author and horticulturist; and Dr. Eric Haskell, Professor Emeritus of French Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies, Scripps College and Director Emeritus of the Clark Humanities Museum, Scripps College. To learn more about the new honorary members CLICK HERE or read more below.

Read more

GCA Medalist In The News…..
PBS NewsHour - How Landscape Designer Piet Oudolf Captures Nature’s ‘Emotions’

The work of Piet Oudolf, who will receive one of the highest honors bestowed by The Garden Club of America (GCA), the Medal of Honor, was featured April 16 on the PBS NewsHour. The medal, awarded for outstanding service to horticulture, will be presented to Mr. Oudolf this weekend at the GCA’s Annual Meeting 2019 in Boston.

Read more

Trustees’ Garden Club and Savannah’s Forsyth Park
Planning for the Future

Forsyth Park has been described as the “crown jewel” of Savannah, GA, and Trustees’ Garden Club is committed to ensuring its future by developing a stewardship plan to protect the iconic spaces and historic integrity of the park while also meeting the demands of modern life. The goals of the project are to partner with the City of Savannah to develop a master plan and to pursue designation of the park as a National Historic Landmark (NHL). CBS affiliate, WTOC, Savannah, covered the story.

Read more

The GCA Supports Brooklyn Botanic Garden
“Fight for Sunlight”

The Garden Club of America has joined the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s (BBG) “fight for sunlight,” opposing proposed changes to zoning rules that would allow construction, including two 39-story towers, immediately adjacent to the BBG that would impact the amount of sunlight the garden receives. The BBG has said that the massive structures could block as much as four and a half hours of sunlight daily, threatening the garden’s conservatories, greenhouses, and nurseries—where plants for the entire garden are propagated and grown.

Read more

It’s Showtime! in Boston
World Class Floral, Horticulture and Photography Exhibits, 31 Boutiques Featured

The public is invited to share in the excitement of The Garden Club of America’s Annual Meeting flower show and four-day boutique at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, May 16 - 19. The flower show will highlight floral designers from across the country and will feature pristine horticulture and in-depth exhibits relating to the natural world. The boutique vendors will offer sumptuous wearables and one-of-a-kind gifts for sale. THERE IS NO ADMISSION FEE. THE PUBLIC IS WELCOME.

Read more

From The Garden Club of America Collection at the Archives of American Gardens
See thousands of historic and contemporary garden images

The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens is a repository of photographic images including those relating to over 4,500 gardens documented by The Garden Club of America. The core of the GCA Collection includes 3,500 hand-colored glass lantern slides from the 1920s and 1930s that had been used by garden clubs to illustrate lectures for their members. Many slides may not have captured a true record of a garden’s colors since the colorists—those who hand-tinted the black and white images—did not necessarily visit the garden in person.

Read more

This Month in GCA History
The initial meeting of the GCA took place in April 1913

“Planting the seeds” is an apt metaphor to describe the outcome of the historic meeting that took place on April 30, 1913 at the home of Mrs. Bayard Henry in Germantown, PA, for it was there that the initial organization of what is now known as The Garden Club of America took place. Until that day, members of several garden clubs had been meeting informally in homes and gardens sharing news of their work for a number of years. It was Elizabeth Price Martin, a member of the Garden Club of Philadelphia, who raised the idea of uniting as a larger group “…to increase our usefulness in the cause of good gardening.” Elizabeth later became the first president of The Garden Club of America. The forward-thinking spirit in all the clubs created The Garden Club of America for “a better knowledge of horticulture among amateurs, for the improvement of our national taste, the preservation of our natural beauty, and for war on its disfigurement.”

Read more