GCA Area Committees: The Eldest of Them All

October 28, 2021

The Philadelphia Committee of The Garden Club of America

The Garden Club of America (GCA) has four Area Committees: Boston, New Jersey, New York, and la grande dame, the Philadelphia Committee of The Garden Club of America (PCGCA). The committee is the eldest in the family, having been founded in 1964, and has been “planting, pollinating, and protecting our planet. . .” ever since.

Founded to support projects which no one club could support on their own, the PCGCA established the Fertilizer Fund (FF). Each of the ten clubs that comprise the PCGCA donates either as a club or as individual members to this fund to support small, local horticulture projects. The main criteria for funding a project are the focus must be on horticulture, the organization must be not-for-profit, and the project must be within the city limits of Philadelphia designed to benefit members of the community. 

Although the pandemic might have deterred a less determined group, not so the PCGCA. The FF for 2020-21 funded eighteen grants totaling $51,391. Among the worthy recipients were the food gardens in Historic Fair Hill, Methodist Family Services/Heritage Farm, the West Laurel Hill Cemetery, therapy gardens at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital, and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society/Logan Square, to name a few. See a full listing of the impressive projects on the PCGCA website. 

To ensure the integrity of their work, the PCGCA takes their oversight responsibilities seriously. The committee carefully reviews and visits each project to make certain the money is well spent. Only horticulture materials, including tools, are funded. Common to all the GCA Area Committees is the gift of being able to work with and get to know members of the other clubs on the committees. PCGCA Chairman Susan Ayres summed it up best when she said, “It’s fun and we do make a difference.”

Photo: the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society/Logan Square

Photo: Philadelphia children learn sustainable farming methods at the Methodist Family Services/Heritage Farm.

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