At Raleigh Garden Club, members find fellowship in the garden

You might picture gardening as a solitary pursuit. One gardener, one communion (or battle, depending on how things are going) with the earth, one task at a time under one big sky.

But some crave a little company – an extra hand working the soil, or just a friendly ear for sharing woes and triumphs, tips and tricks.

Ninety years ago, Susan Iden, a reporter for the Raleigh Times, wrote: “If there is one thing that a gardener likes to do better than garden, it is to talk over garden problems and joys with another gardener.” In that spirit, she called a meeting of fellow gardeners in the area, and the Raleigh Garden Club was born.

Raleigh Garden Club, which celebrated its 90^th birthday with a luncheon last month at JC Raulston Arboretum, still works to beautify the community and bring people together to learn and to help, and many other clubs have taken root in the area with the same aims. A lot has changed since garden clubs came into vogue early in the 20th century, but the basic principles – “loving the space that you’re in” is how Oakwood Garden Club President Anita Blomme sums it up – are still a guiding force.

Traditions in modern times

While garden clubs have always been active in the community – beautifying roadsides, hosting tours for the public, and bringing in speakers are time-honored traditions for nearly all clubs – the scope of their work is expanding. Bringing firsthand experience with plants and working with the earth to people who wouldn’t otherwise have access to it is a high priority in the modern era.

Raleigh Garden Club’s programs include hosting visits and activities for assisted living facility residents, providing holiday décor and a permanent Sanctuary Garden at the Transitions LifeCare hospice and assisting with the Job Start program at the Raleigh Correctional Center for Women.

“We learn from them as well as they learn from us,” said Diane Kuzdrall, a club member and committee chair from Cary, of people they work with during activities collectively called “garden therapy.”

The club, which has around 170 members, also sponsors an annual scholarship, internships at the JC Raulston Arboretum, and the Rosey Girls, a group at the Raleigh Girls Club that plants and harvests a vegetable garden and learns about the connections among people, food and the earth.

Garden clubs yield rewards on a personal level, too. Members can take classes, become certified as judges for flower shows and other events, and learn from experts who give talks at monthly meetings on topics as varied as insects, composting, wildflowers and chimney swifts.

Neighborhood garden clubs can serve as a way to get to know the guy next door as well as families from a few streets over. Plus, it’s hard not to attract offers of help when passersby see you struggling with a project.

Just northeast of downtown Raleigh, Oakwood Garden Club’s 30 members meet monthly to chat about local issues as well as learn from speakers on topics as diverse as microgreens, orchids and edible weeds. Even more people, however, turn out to pitch in when a project is afoot.

That sense of community is what attracted Blomme, now the club’s president, in the first place, and it’s what has kept her and other busy, working neighbors involved.

“We all become better friends and better neighbors by getting together regularly and learning together and laughing at each other and trying new things and organizing a big event every year,” she said. “At the end of the day, (a garden club) is wanting to be a part of your community, wanting to be plugged in in a way that’s helpful but that you can also benefit from and learn from.”

Garden clubs today are not just about showing off prize roses or having the best garden on the street (though plenty of members can claim such honors). Novice gardeners are welcome, local club leaders say.

“I know very little about gardening,” Blomme confided. “I think that might be a hesitancy for some people. When they hear about garden club, they’re like, ‘Oh, I could never join garden club, I don’t know anything.’ The whole point of garden club is to learn and educate each other, educate others and do some community service.”

Some of the topics garden club members dig into probably look a little different than what the clubs’ founders discussed decades ago. Urban agriculture is big these days, as is beekeeping, composting and sustainability. Then there are topics that feel a little retro, like canning and heirloom gardening – skills that previous generations learned as a matter of everyday life.

“Back then, they probably didn’t need to be taught,” Blomme said. “We’re learning some things they knew how to do.”

No more white gloves

Another thing that’s changed over the years is that people – especially women – are busier, and their duties often take them out of the home and far from the garden.

“Younger women used to be the backbone of garden clubs,” said Judy Bond, president of the Garden Club of North Carolina, “but now all of them work and they are just far too busy to belong to a lot of different organizations. The lifestyle has completely changed.”

Many garden clubs are struggling to keep up their membership numbers. The Garden Club of North Carolina currently has 280 clubs, with 6,500 members. But in 2003, it had 391 clubs with nearly 9,000 members. Nationwide, the slide is even more steep. At its peak in the mid-1990s, the National Garden Clubs organization represented around 300,000 members. Now, the number is 180,000.

The culprit is a mix of perception and reality, Bond said.

“Part of that has to do with the image of white gloves and hats and pouring of tea and that kind of thing,” Bond said. While some clubs around the state still carry on those traditions, most take a much more informal and inclusive feel, she said. But word hasn’t gotten out, especially among young people.

“We had a lot of trouble moving into the Internet age,” Bond observed, “and primarily it’s because many of our members are resistant to change.”

But even if it’s slow, change is starting to come. Many garden clubs now maintain websites where members (or potential members) can check out calendars and communicate with each other. And some clubs are shifting away from traditional daytime meetings and activities to evening, weekend and lunch-hour events that allow working women – and men – to join in.

Marty Sawall found Raleigh Garden Club online shortly after moving to the area two years ago. Her interest was “partially to meet people and partially because I really like playing in the dirt,” she explained. At 37, she’s one of the group’s younger members.

Not many of her peers are as interested in gardening as she is, Sawall conceded, but she said groups like garden clubs offer something more: community.

“I think as religion has less of a pull for people, they will find other places to find fellowship,” she said.

Community roots

Just as a lone gardener hopes his or her plants will “take” and thrive in their yards, garden club members are motivated by a desire to put roots in their communities. That may be one reason that local garden clubs, including Raleigh Garden Club, Oakwood Garden Club and Chapel Hill Garden Club, have managed to hold their membership numbers fairly steady in recent years.

“Our area attracts unique people,” said Char Thomann, president of Chapel Hill Garden Club, which has around 120 members. “Our garden club members are just looking for things to do because they’re really active. No matter what their age, they’re active people.”

And garden clubs, more than many other social organizations, provide plenty of opportunity for activity, whether it’s studying for accreditation to judge flower contests or getting your hands in the dirt. There’s also a wide range of topics covered, which means there’s always something to learn, even for experts, said Shay Blakemore, immediate past president of Raleigh Garden Club.

“Anyone who has an interest in either floral arranging or plants or the environment, there’s a slot for you,” she said. “There’s something you can find to do within the garden club.”

This story was originally published July 10, 2015 at 6:16 AM with the headline "At Raleigh Garden Club, members find fellowship in the garden."