Parks: Where Nature Meets Community

September 07, 2022

Garden Club of Barrington Embraces Community Project at Barrington’s Citizen’s Park

In 2010, The Garden Club of Barrington, Barrington, Illinois, donated three Bald Cypress trees to Barrington’s Citizen’s Park as part of The Garden Club of America’s Centennial Tree Program. In 2013, a large stone was placed under the trees with a bronze plaque noting our club’s gift of three Bald Cypress Trees “Taxodium Distichum” in celebration of The Garden Club of America’s centennial celebration. Through the years, the trees have flourished but became nearly swallowed up by an abundance of invasive plants and weeds.

In the summer of 2021, to honor the 200th birthday of Frederick Law Olmsted, GCB created a native garden around the Bald Cypress trees. The club worked with the Barrington Park District to have all the invasives removed and then coordinated with GCA Honorary Member Roy Diblik to come up with a garden design. In June, 2021, 1,000 plugs were planted. Throughout the 2021 season, club members volunteered over 200 hours of planting, watering, and weeding. 

GCB will continue to provide the labor needed to plant, water, weed and nurture the new garden and has great plans for the 2022 growing season. 100 plugs were recently added in May, including Jacob’s ladder, puccoons, and prairie phlox. The club also added butterfly weed as well as five buttonbush shrubs Cephalanthus occidentalis, the 2021 recipient of the GCA Montine McDaniel Freeman Horticulture Medal. 

Club members consider this garden an ideal example of Fredrick Law Olmsted’s philosophy that parks are where nature meets community. Their vision is to continue to enhance this area by highlighting the Bald Cypress trees, and maintaining a beautiful native garden that attracts pollinators and is enjoyed by Barrington residents who visit Citizen’s Park.

The Garden Club of America (GCA) is a proud founding partner of the Olmsted 200 bicentennial campaign. The GCA's contribution to the celebration is the unprecedented opportunity for all 199 GCA clubs to connect the needs of their communities with Olmsted’s revolutionary vision for parks and public landscapes by participating in the GCA’s initiative, PARKS: Where Nature Meets Community. Each club project helps their local community public spaces while collectively celebrating Olmsted’s genius for public access to nature across the country.

 

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