Garden Club awards two scholarships
The Bella Vista Garden Club awarded two scholarships to University of Arkansas students at its meeting Sept. 22 at Bella Vista Community Church.
Pat Meyer, president of the garden club, said, “I think it’s great. We’ve been doing the scholarships for a long time. We’ve been raising money. To give two of them at $4,000 each is a big deal. That’s one of our main goals is to support our scholarships.”
She said the money is raised by the plant sales the club has each spring.
The recipients were Stephen Turner, 21, of Hot Springs, and Isabella Norsworthy, 19, of West Fork.
Turner is working toward a master’s degree in forestry and greenhouse management and has been in ROTC and is serving in the Arkansas National Guard. He has a 3.8 grade point average and graduates next May. He also interned at Garvan Woodland Gardens in Hot Springs. He recently married, and his wife is paying for tuition to cosmetology school, so he is grateful for the scholarship, he said.
Norsworthy will have her bachelor’s degree in three years and plans to get her master’s degree. She has a 4.0 grade point average. She finished her freshman year three credits shy of being a junior. She said she grew up on a cattle farm where vegetables were also raised, so she has a passion for horticulture. She participated in 4H and FFA as a child. She plans to pursue a fruit breeding master’s, she said. She added she is grateful for the opportunity to work in horticulture.
The garden club also received two awards: first place for the Heritage Award for the Arkansas Federation of Garden Clubs, Inc., and first place from the National Garden Clubs Inc., for the work they do at the Bella Vista Memorial Garden Cemetery.
Ilene Vought, spokesman for the Bella Vista Cemetery Association, presented the awards.
“We are so grateful. Words cannot express how grateful we are for the Bella Vista Garden Club keeping the cemetery looking lovely. We just can’t thank you enough. It’s always peaceful,” she said.
Mary Doyle heads up the cemetery efforts of the garden club.
“We consistently win national awards, so that’s been wonderful,” she said. “We put a lot of work into it.”
In 2020 the club won first place in National Competition for the cemetery. In 2019 the club won first in National Competition Award for preservation of beauty, and in 2018 a first for the AFGC Heritage Award.