Restoring a Community Amphitheatre
Indianapolis Garden Club Works with Parks Alliance of Indianapolis to Repurpose Thomas Taggart Memorial

In celebration of its ninetieth anniversary in 2020, the Indianapolis Garden Club (IGC) wanted to honor its heritage by helping breathe new life into the Thomas Taggart Memorial. The long-neglected, two-story limestone structure had stood for ninety years in Indianapolis’s 862-acre Riverside Regional Park, the city’s second-largest park. Working with the Parks Alliance of Indianapolis, the IGC was able to give a $100,000 grant to add native plantings to help beautify the restored Taggart Memorial in its new incarnation as a community amphitheatre. The landscape now includes almost two dozen large caliper trees, all native to Indiana, as well as beds of hardy perennials like swamp milkweed, purple coneflower, oak leaf hydrangea, and winterberry.

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Founders Fund Through the Years
Bee Healthy Garden Transforms Lives and Teaches Relationship Building

In 2017, The Garden Club of America awarded a $30,000 Founders Fund grant to the Kettle Moraine Garden Club for the Bee Healthy Garden at The Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee’s 300-acre Camp Whitcomb-Mason. The grant helped support and expand the Bee Healthy Garden, where 15,000 inner-city children, aged from seven to eighteen, participate in nature-related and relationship-building activities. The purpose of Bee Healthy Garden, with its vegetable-filled pizza garden, bee hives, living sundial installation, and plans for more gardens, is for nature to provide a path to lead inner-city youth to a positive future, as well as help teach art, science, and a love of gardening. The Boys and Girls Club’s aim is to increase educational and social emotional learning opportunities.

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A Kitchen Garden Finds Its Rhythm in Beaumont, Texas
Magnolia GC Creates a Potager at McFaddin-Ward House Historic Museum

The Magnolia Garden Club recently collaborated with the McFaddin-Ward House Historic Museum located in Beaumont, Texas, to install a kitchen garden on the museum’s grounds. The McFaddin-Ward House Museum was one of a number of grand residences built in the early 1900’s by local architect Henry Conrad Mauer. Mauer, who trained at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, incorporated local materials with the most advanced electrical, heating, and plumbing systems of the time. The idea for the garden came from the museum’s director, who involved his education coordinator and members of the Magnolia Garden Club to help with the garden’s design.

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In the News: GCA Medalist Paul Alan Cox, PhD
Violets - a New Approach in Treating Glioblastoma

Under the leadership of Paul Alan Cox, PhD, scientists at The Brain Chemistry Labs in Jackson Hole are researching the use of plants as possible cures and treatments for neurodegenerative illnesses and diseases of the human brain. The Labs recently announced findings that show extracts from common violets, Viola odorata, may influence new approaches for treating glioblastoma, an aggressive form of cancer in the human brain. Currently, after a glioblastoma diagnosis, the median survival time is nine to sixteen months.

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The GCA’s 2022 Founders Fund Winner Announced
Bee Successful: The 4G Honey Team

The Garden Club of America’s Founders Fund was established in 1934 to provide financial support, through a competitive grant program, to projects proposed by GCA member clubs. The projects are designed to restore, improve, and protect the quality of the environment through educational programs and action in the fields of conservation and civic improvement. This year the $30,000 winning grant was awarded to Bee Successful: The 4G Honey Team and was proposed by The Gertrude Windsor Garden Club, Tyler, Texas.

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The Garden Club of America's 2022 Annual Meeting
Pathways From the Palisades to the Pinelands

The Garden Club of America’s 2022 Annual Meeting was held in Parsippany, New Jersey on April 29-30. This year’s meeting was a hybrid event with limited in-person attendance as well as a full schedule of virtual attendance events open to all GCA club members. The Pathways Flower Show is now online for members of the public and GCA club members across the country!

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GCA Grant Restores Historic Park
New Orleans City Park, Louisiana

On August 29, 2021, Hurricane Ida struck south Louisiana with maximum winds of up to 150 mph. The storm’s wind field was fierce and significant, creating wind-related destruction for eight hours in and around New Orleans. New Orleans City Park lost power that day, finally regaining it on September 6. The park sustained approximately $2 million in damages, specifically impacting the urban tree canopy, facilities, and park infrastructure. The major winds resulted in park-wide tree loss, hanging limbs, and significant debris on the ground.

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