Why Join a Garden Club?
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There are nearly 200,000 men and women of all ages and backgrounds across the United States who can attest that the rewards of belonging to a garden club go far beyond the pure pleasure of growing things. While joining a local garden club is definitely a great way to “green” your thumb, membership also provides an opportunity to expand your interests and build lifelong friendships while bettering your community and the environment.
National Garden Clubs, Inc. is the largest volunteer service organization of its type in the world. This means that garden club members have a powerful voice that can be heard cops-to-coast and around the world, a voice that promotes the love of gardening, civic concerns, floral design, and environmental responsibility. Over 100 years ago in Athens, Georgia, 12 friends came together to share their plants and cuttings with each other. Soon enough, these meetings snowballed into a movement for women to share their plants and also advocate for the conservation of natural habitats in their areas. A garden club is simply a group of people who enjoy all things pertaining to plants, flowers, and horticulture. Many clubs give back to their communities and some may have an emphasis on certain topics like landscaping or wildlife. Overall, garden clubs simply offer a space for individuals with common gardening interests to gather and share tips, ideas, and resources for projects. A bit removed from its origins, garden clubs now come in all shapes and sizes. Your age and gender are no longer defining factors when you join! These clubs are a great resource for anyone and everyone to unwind and become even more enthusiastic about gardening. It isn’t difficult to find local garden clubs, and many are affiliated with the National Garden Clubs (NGC) — which is the largest volunteer organization of its type in the world that works to connect communities, teach individuals about horticulture, and promote environmental causes. When your local club is part of your state Garden Club Federation, you’re automatically a member of the NGC! |
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Gardens are our sanctuaries. Hidden away from the bustle of life – and in all honesty – other people. We tend to put effort into screening and privacy to fashion our personal havens – somewhere to hide from personal contact outside our immediate family and friends. Yet gardening is a hobby best pursued with the assistance of others – We gain advice from books and magazines, radio, TV, you tube channels, and online fora. The 21st-century garden clubber is an active environmentalist, a historic preservationist, a floral designer, a horticulturist. She or he uses social media; restores, improves, and protects the environment; and engages meaningfully with the broader community. The late New York Times garden columnist Allen Lacy understood the challenge of unjust stereotypes: “Gardening is not a hobby, and only non-gardeners would describe it as such,” he wrote back in 1998. “[M]ost hobbies are intellectually limited and make no reference to the larger world. By contrast, being wholeheartedly involved with gardens is involvement with life itself in the deepest sense.” As Lacy understood, gardening is more than just buying plants. Gardening is science. It’s understanding that healthy environments require rich ecological diversity. It’s finding a way to provide food in the face of war and famine. It’s preserving rare species, which can unlock secrets to human health and longevity. Working with flowers— and offering flower shows—is more than creating a pretty centerpiece. It is an opportunity to establish standards of excellence; to broaden knowledge of horticulture, conservation, and photography; and to share beauty and art with a wider audience. The Philadelphia Flower Show underscores the power of garden clubs— in simple dollars and cents, it has an economic impact of $60 million. Garden clubs are about engaging with nature. Author Florence Williams writes about the “epidemic dislocation from the outdoors”: Americans checking their phones 1,500 times a week; students spending more time indoors than outside; a majority of Americans living in cities, where engagement with nature is increasingly difficult. Is it any wonder that childhood obesity has reached alarming levels? |
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Garden clubs are an antidote to this epidemic. Those who have no awe for nature feel no need to respect or protect it. That’s why garden clubs are actively engaging in communities as varied as Savannah and San Francisco. They provide education in the schools, maintain public gardens, teach prison inmates about propagation, educate the public about recycling. They implement horticultural therapy in hospital gardens and illustrate “farm to table” in community and urban harvest programs.
Garden clubs are also conservationists. Through concerted action, they help address climate change, protect native habitat, and maintain and sustain public lands. Only a few years after garden clubs across the country pledged to grow milkweed, scientists reported an identifiable resurgence in the monarch population in Mexico. Annually, garden clubs contribute millions of dollars to environmental and civic projects, offering a powerful private response to environmental problems at a time when public resources and public support are challenged. Garden clubs matter because they respect the past and invest in the future. Thousands of historic sites are sustained through the efforts of dedicated volunteers. They understand that a garden is not made in a day or a week or a month. Like friendships, gardening requires sustained care and maintenance, hard work, and a love of the unknown. Gardening teaches us persistence, humility, humor, and hope. To grow a garden, as so many poets and writers have recognized, is to be an optimist. Gardening unites us as a people—across time, and through families and cultures. Most if not all of us have some special memories of plants and gardens: a rose that reminds us of a beloved grandmother; a bush transplanted from one home to another; a tree propagated from seed; a “gift plant” now dominating the backyard. Garden clubs matter because they foster appreciation and protection of our ever-changing land. In different places, and in different ways, we all find a common connection. |
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