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American Garden Clubs The History

The garden club movement represented a definite step upward in the development of this country; it is evidence of a decided gain in appreciation of the aesthetic rather than of the strictly utilitarian. Agricultural and horticultural societies marked earlier stages of this progress. The former were naturally interested primarily in farming; the latter in the growing of fine vegetables, fruits and, to a less extent, flowers considered as specimens.

Garden clubs were interested in gardening in the highest and broadest sense: as a means to the aesthetic development of the members, as a community asset, and as a concerted movement for the preservation and development of the natural beauty of the country as a whole. These clubs were started by women, and for a number of years the movement was purely feminine, but years later more and more men became active members; in some localities, men's garden clubs organized and functioned enthusiastically and successfully.

The movement, moreover, was typically American. In no other country was there anything comparable to it. In every portion of the U. S. the garden club was an integral part of the community life. And though individual clubs varied in size from a village or neighborhood group to the large coordinated federations of clubs with national membership, all had a share in the general growth and building of civic and national beauty. Indeed, so valuable was this movement considered by leading thinkers that garden clubs were sponsored by newspapers, garden magazines, and even by commercial and industrial organizations, like railroad and life insurance companies.

The first step was taken in'60 when the Horticultural Garden Club was organized at Sandy Springs, Md. This was followed in'91 by the organization of the Ladies' Garden Club of Athens, Ga. The first garden club to have a constitution, by-laws and officers, this body is still in active existence.

In'93, the National Plant, Flower and Fruit Guild was organized by Mrs. John Wood Stewart as a purely philanthropic organization, its object being to see that the poor of city tenement districts, and the inmates of hospitals and insane asylums might share in the bounty of the more fortunate through the distribution of contributed plants, flowers like the tillandsia cyanea and fruit.

In'13 the Garden Club of America was organized by a group of women inspired by Mrs. John Willis Martin of Philadelphia. At the first meeting held May 1,'13, 12 clubs were represented. At one time the Garden Club of America boasted 105 member clubs and more than 7000 individual members, and is national in its membership and international in its influence on horticulture and gardening.

Thereafter garden clubs were gradually organized in all parts of the country and in'20 a number of groups in Virginia, seeing the need of concerted action when civic, state or national legislation was required, formed themselves into the first Garden Club Federation. In'24 the clubs of the State of New York followed suit, and soon 30 or more Federations formed in the various states.

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