THE GARDEN CLUB OF AMERICA

July 16, 2019

2019 Founders Fund Winner Announced

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.

July 11, 2019

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.

July 09, 2019

Help Solve A Garden Mystery- The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens

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.

July 03, 2019

Weed Wrangle is on the Move

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.

July 02, 2019

The GCA Announces Restoration Grant to GC of Honolulu

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.

June 27, 2019

From The Garden Club of America Collection at the Archives of American Gardens

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?

June 25, 2019

This Month in GCA History

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.”

June 20, 2019

The GCA Celebrates 70th Anniversary of Sand County Almanac

2019 marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of A Sand County Almanac. Its author, Aldo Leopold, was a keynote speaker at the 1947 Annual Meeting of The Garden Club of America in Minneapolis and his speech, “The Ecological Conscience,” was the foundation of many of the ideas which later appeared in this book.

June 11, 2019

Eugene Daub to Design the GCA’s National Photography Medal

Famed medal artist and sculptor Eugene Daub has been commissioned to design the newest GCA national medal – The Garden Club of America Photography Medal. Mr. Daub is a nationally recognized artist and the recipient of major national awards for excellence in medallic art. He is best known for his portraits and figurative monument sculpture created in the classic heroic style. His sculpture of the civil rights pioneer, Rosa Parks, was unveiled in 2013 in the U.S. Capitol National Statuary Hall.

June 11, 2019

National Pollinator Week June 17-23

National Pollinator Week is a time to celebrate pollinators and take action to protect them. There has been an alarming decline in the number of pollinators in recent decades — through chemicals, diseases, mites, loss of habitat, and global climate change — and it has international repercussions. The GCA Board of Associates Centennial Pollinator Fellowship was established in spring 2013 to facilitate independent research in this field. One-third of the food we eat has been fertilized by pollinators.

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