Garden clubs refocus efforts to stay relevant
On a recent, breezy, spring morning, the exhibition center at Will Rogers Park in Oklahoma City is abuzz with activity.
In a large room, orchid growers are readying their plants for an upcoming show. Long tables are scattered throughout the room topped with clumps of dirt and pots ready to receive their delicate contents.
In one of the meeting rooms, a cacophony of voices — the chatter of 20 or so women — drifts through the door, while two or three other women prepare a potluck luncheon in the adjoining kitchen.
The women are gathered for a meeting of the Oklahoma City Council of Garden Clubs. Self-proclaimed guardians of the exhibition center, the council is an amalgam of 18 to 20 local clubs and societies that have been meeting at the exhibition center for almost 50 years.
Several of the women gather around a table to talk about the building, the organization and a gardening club's place in today’s culture.
“The mission of this council is to protect this building and keep it for gardeners,” said Johnita Turner, 74, president of the Oklahoma City Council of Garden Clubs. “We need to protect it so it doesn’t become a wedding chapel.”
“Absolutely!” others chime in.
The exhibition center was founded in 1963, in large part because of women on the council who helped push through a bond issue. Last year, however, the council’s long-standing claim on the building as a home for gardeners was threatened when the city advanced plans to upgrade and alter its design in favor of other activities.
But the council of garden clubs held its ground and, for now at least, remains rooted at the facility.
“I’m concerned about what would become of the building
if the garden council were not here to protect it,” Turner said. “There are one or two people from each garden club on the council. Representatives can tell us what they would like to have done with the building.”
Staying relevant
Times are changing. “The number of people in Oklahoma garden clubs right now is about the same number of people that were in my district (garden clubs) in 1979,” said MaryAnn Holman, 84, president of Oklahoma State Garden Clubs, the parent organization of the Oklahoma City Council of Garden Clubs.
Despite declining numbers, Holman and Turner agree that the values of conservation, natural beauty and Earthfriendly practices are just as important as ever.
“So we have dwindled. Why have we dwindled? Because women have gone to work. They really don’t have time. It isn’t that they don’t want to, because gardening right now is the biggest hobby in the nation. Everybody is into gardening,” she said.
Old is new again
Like little seeds that have been planted, members say they are seeing signs of new growth.
Holman pointed out that some newer garden clubs in rural areas are growing rapidly. The first meeting of a new group in Okemah had 44 attendees. “And they’re young people, not old people,” she said.
Pat Murrell, 75, said that while some the older clubs have waning membership, others are becoming revitalized. Her club, founded in 1960, steadily has gained numbers in recent years and will be up to about 20 this year.
Interest in gardening is everywhere, said Jean Calder, 70. People just need to talk about it.
“You find gardeners in unusual places a lot of times. I recruited three to the Late Bloomers just in my salon. Because we’ll start to talk gardening at different times of the year, and they inquire about my garden club. They’re either wanting to learn or wanting to share,” she said.
Marilyn Lahr, 74, council historian and member of the Viola and Late Bloomers garden clubs, said love keeps the clubs going.
“It’s people loving plants and people loving people,” she said, adding that some men are members.
“Brave men!” another member interjected.
In the end, gardening, the clubs, the exhibition center — it’s all about passages and seasons for Pearl Sullens, 94.
“I joined when I was 65. My husband was a gardener, too. He took care of the flowers, and I mowed the yard,” she said. “When he passed away, I stopped mowing the lawn because I wore shorts and I got whistles. I still keep up the garden in memory of him. I think loving flowers, you feel so close to God.”