2019 Founders Fund Winner Announced
Abrams Creek Wetlands Preserve: Restoring a Calcareous Muck Fen

The Founders Fund was established in 1934 to provide monetary awards to projects proposed by GCA-member clubs. The projects considered 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 Abrams Creek Wetland Preserve (ACWP), an extremely rare and unique habitat, providing a safe haven for over 300 plant species and 20 state-rare native plants. The Founders Fund grant will be used to sustain and preserve these rare species and its rare marsh habitat.

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Bookworm Gardens, GCA 2008 Founders Fund Finalist Featured at the US Botanic Garden on Capitol Hill

Sheboygan, Wisconsin’s Bookworm Gardens, a 2008 GCA Founders Fund Finalist and GCA grant recipient, is among 20 gardens currently highlighted at the United States Botanic Garden on Capitol Hill. The “Gardens Across America” exhibit, open through October, celebrates the rich diversity of more than 600 public gardens in the United States. The Bookworm Gardens’ vignette brings to life the children’s book The Magic School Bus Plants Seeds. Other exhibits with close ties to the GCA include: the U.S. National Arboretum, whose Executive Director, Richard Olsen became a 2019 GCA Honorary Member; Denver Botanic, Garden, whose CEO Brian Vogt received the 2019 Cynthia Pratt Laughlin Medal; and the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden, a 2019 Founders’ Fund Finalist proposed by the Garden Club of Allegheny County.

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Help Solve A Garden Mystery- The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens
Pasadena, California, 1914-1949

Do you love gardens and the thrill of the hunt? The Garden Club of America Collection at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens has images of numerous gardens across the United States that need a bit of sleuthing to be positively identified. Some images belonged to slide lectures that were dismantled over time or simply never were labelled. Regardless of how it happened, they are a mystery! If this garden looks familiar to you, please READ MORE.

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Weed Wrangle is on the Move
Join the many GCA member clubs participating in this effort!

The Indianapolis Garden Club hosted Indiana’s first Weed Wrangle® adding to the long list of states that are joining this effort. There are over 14 states involved and the program continues to grow across the country. Weed Wrangle® is part of the GCA’s Partners for Plants program, a volunteer effort to help rescue our public parks and green spaces from invasive species through hands-on removal of especially harmful trees, vines, and flowering plants.

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The GCA Announces Restoration Grant to GC of Honolulu
Restoration of Limahuli Garden and Preserve

The Garden Club of Honolulu (TGCH), Oahu has been awarded a Restoration Initiative grant from The Garden Club of America to help restore the Limahuli Garden and Preserve. In 2018, the site experienced more than 180 inches of rain causing extraordinary damage to both the 25 acre garden and the 1,000 acre preserve. This "rain bomb" is now certified as a national rainfall record. The Limahuli Garden, closed since the storm, will reopen to the public on June 13, 2019.

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From The Garden Club of America Collection at the Archives of American Gardens
Espaliers, Attractive and Functional. Who Knew?

These days, many espaliers are designed to accent a garden, providing an intricate visual attraction to visitors. Trees or shrubs are trained on a wall or on a trellis to form different, oftentimes decorative, patterns. But did you know that they serve a functional purpose as well?

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This Month in GCA History
Discovering Flowers and Friendship on a 1929 Voyage to England

In June 1929, eighty-two members of The Garden Club of America visited England as invited guests of the English-Speaking Union. In the words of Elizabeth Lockwood, fifth president of The Garden Club of America, “We went to England primarily to see gardens, to find new flowers, and to learn how to grow them. We found not only charming gardens, but also such courtesy and such friendship growing there that the flowers were almost forgotten in the delightful fellowships.”

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