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Good news from the GCA's member clubs, collaborating organizations, and national efforts is plentiful. Enjoy the full articles below, and follow us on social media to be prompted when new news is posted.
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Carothers Environmental Scholar on the Benefits of GCA-Funded Field Research
September 10, 2024
Zoë Riggs, 2024 Mary T. Carothers Summer Environmental Studies Scholar, credits GCA-supported research in Loreto, Peru, for helping build “a more rounded, empathetic, and critically thinking young professional.” Riggs, an undergraduate in Environmental Sciences at Montreat College, conducted field research this summer that included surveys of wetland plant communities and herpetofaunal - reptiles and amphibians of a particular region or habitat - communities. “Exposure to a variety of ecosystems and kinds of organisms,” explains Riggs, “allows an ecologist to expand their frame of reference when asking questions about the natural world.”
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Indianapolis GC’s Garden Walk Supports Community Projects
September 04, 2024
The Indianapolis Garden Club’s (IGC) Garden Walk has returned more than $825,000 in grants to public spaces in the Indianapolis community. The walk, conceived 28 years ago, sells tickets and sponsorships for visits to five or six private gardens on the first Wednesday in June—rain or shine. The Garden Walk is a June tradition and a beloved community event. Patrons leisurely stroll through the properties that range from owner planted and lovingly tended to architect planned, manicured estates. Grants, funded by the Garden Walk, reflect the mission of the IGC and the GCA, to restore, improve, and protect the quality of the environment.
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Garden Club of America Medalist Awarded the Elizabeth Medal of Honour by the Royal Horticultural Society
August 28, 2024
On March 26, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), the United Kingdom’s leading gardening charity, awarded the Elizabeth Medal of Honour to the Garden Club of America’s 2018 Medal of Honor recipient and president emeritus of the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG), Charles R. “Chipper” Wichman, for his outstanding contributions to horticulture, gardening, and plant conservation. NTBG is a network of botanic gardens, preserves, and research centers in Hawaii and Florida.
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GCA/Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize Fellows to Research “Landscapes after the Fire”
August 21, 2024
The GCA’s 2024-2025 Rome Prize Fellows in Landscape Architecture Megumi Aihara and Dan Spiegel will begin their joint fellowship at the American Academy in Rome this winter. Their project, “Landscapes after the Fire,” will study written and visual images of post-fire landscapes across cultures in film, literature, and architectural artifacts. Aihara and Spiegel will focus on the simultaneous devastation and renewal brought about by fire, searching for written and visual images of possible futures that suggest a path for reimagination, resilience, and inhabitation. Applications for the GCA/Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize, which will open August 24, 2024, and are due November 1, 2024, are accessible through the GCA website
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Cambridge Plant & Garden Club
Partners with Local High School to Sell Native Plants
August 07, 2024
Like many GCA clubs, Cambridge Plant & Garden Club (CP&GC) has sought to educate and encourage gardeners to add sustainable native species to their gardens. What better way than to host a native plant sale?! For the third year, the CP&GC collaborated with a local high school to sell native plants. It is a pairing of expertise: Cambridge Rindge & Latin School (CRLS) students handle the technological know-how—creating a native plant “zine”—and physical help before and during the sale, while garden club members select and order the plants, develop the marketing information, and promote and manage the sale. The sale goal is not to make money, but to get native plants out into the world and raise awareness of the benefits to butterflies, bees, and birds.
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San Francisco Bay Area Clubs Celebrate Collaboration with Save the Bay
June 26, 2024
This past October, as the sun glistened on the San Francisco Bay, members of six Northern California GCA garden clubs happily reconnected as they boarded the historic USS Potomac—FDR’s presidential yacht, now docked in Oakland, CA—for a brisk and educational Bay cruise. The mood was celebratory as members from Carmel, Hillsborough, Marin, Orinda, Piedmont, and Woodside-Atherton garden clubs eagerly gathered to view and learn about the beneficial results of their shoreline restoration efforts.
Late Bloomers Garden Club and the Emerald Trail Butterfly Garden
June 20, 2024
In 2024, the city of Jacksonville, Florida welcomed the beginning of its exciting new Emerald Trail, a signature outdoor destination of trails, greenways, and parks encircling the city’s urban core. This “emerald necklace” of parks will eventually connect fourteen historic Jacksonville neighborhoods to waterways and to the downtown area. It reflects the original vision conceived over 100 years ago by Henry Klutho, one of the architects instrumental to the rebuilding of Jacksonville after the great fire of 1901.
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Ladue Garden Club Supports Transformation of Mulch Site to Nature Preserve
June 12, 2024
With the help of local garden clubs, a 12.5-acre city mulch site along a sub tributary of the Mississippi River in Ladue, Missouri is being transformed into a vibrant nature preserve called Deer Creek Preserve. Beginning in 2019, Ladue Garden Club and The Garden Club of St. Louis began working with the City of Ladue as part of its BOSTA (Beautification, Open Space and Tree Advisory) Committee to repurpose this long, narrow site along Deer Creek. A master plan laid out paths through the woods and meadow for biking, walking, and running, along with benches and overlooks by the creek.
GCA Iselin Fellow Uses Techniques from Around the World to Care for US Landscapes
June 06, 2024
Hans Friedl, 2023 Garden Club of America Hope Goddard Iselin Fellow in Public Horticulture, says GCA’s scholarship allowed him “to continue field research in expanding the way we care for trees and each other here in the United States.” The recent graduate of Illinois Institute of Technology with a master’s degree in landscape architecture worked with Japanese master gardener Kurato Fujimoto to conserve at-risk legacy cherry trees at the US National Arboretum by implementing Japanese horticultural practices.
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GCA Awards 12 Star Educators the 2024 Elizabeth Abernathy Hull Award
May 29, 2024
The Garden Club of America is proud to announce the recipients of the 2024 Elizabeth Abernathy Hull Award for Early Environmental Education (Hull Award). Established in 1992, the Hull Award recognizes individuals who, through working with children under 16 years of age in horticulture and the environment, inspire an appreciation for the beauty and fragility of our planet. Recipients were nominated by GCA Clubs across the country and each recipient was truly outstanding in her/his field. From fostering a love for the outdoors to empowering communities by growing their own food to encouraging the next generation of environmental stewards, these educators are making a real difference in our world. In honor of Miss Hull (1900-1996), an active member of the Ridgefield Garden Club and an early proponent of environmental education, a $1,000 prize is awarded to each recipient.
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