Garden Clubs

The Blooming of a Movement

Whether the focus was playing a vital role in beautifying parts of the city, sharing knowledge of horticultural practices, teaching the basics of floral arrangement, or supporting conservation efforts, the activities surrounding garden clubs and individual gardeners have been an established presence in the area for well over a century. The area, once an economic hotbed for Kalamazoo’s first cash crop, celery, later became known for its production of pansies. This connection to flowers and the economy around their production, has led to a wellspring of active participation in gardening clubs. One could say that Kalamazooans have long been attracted to both the labor and the love of what rich soil can birth in the form of handsome landscapes, some of which designed with civic aspirations in mind. At first, an outgrowth of progressive social concerns and civic reform efforts, one can view through a historical lens the emergence of garden clubs and community beautification efforts as a corrective to problems associated with urbanization and industrialization. By the 1920s, several decades of industrial intensification had left large swaths of the city in poor condition, including the pollution of the Kalamazoo River and Portage Creek. Today, both civic officials and garden clubs continue to recognize the importance of green spaces where residents can more easily interact with and appreciate the natural world.

Club of Little Gardens

Club of Little Gardens was established in 1915 with a charge to “provide mutual help among its members in gardening and caring for flowers and plants.” In addition to their monthly meetings, where members typically learned about the science behind flowers and plants from leading authorities on horticulture, the group also organized flower exhibitions and worked with civic officials to ensure that public parks featured gardens. This first garden club in Kalamazoo was spearheaded by Mary L. Clark, the wife of Alexander L. Clark, who was a secretary and treasurer of the Standard Paper Company. Predictably, many of the women club members and officers of the club derived from privilege and affluence. They possessed both the time and the resources to dedicate themselves to the cause of gardening and civic beautification. But garden clubs were not only comprised of women from Kalamazoo’s patrician class.

“The Club of Little Gardens started with the idea of stimulating garden interests among its members. The common notion that only women are interested in gardening, that men do not care, are too tired or too lazy was soon dissipated. The writer belonging to this despised class can say truthfully that the men in the club have developed remarkably, in fact we have some men who are as good as the women on this subject.”

–Dr. H.H. Tashjian, Kalamazoo Gazette, 14 February 1926

During the summer months in the 1920s, the Club of Little Gardens would meet at Dr. W.E. Upjohn’s “majestic” Brook Lodge farm during peony season. The local Chamber of Commerce formed a committee and club to encourage citizens to beautify city lots that had become vacant and unsightly in 1915. In the spring of 1921, another effort by the chamber to encourage the public to join their Home and Garden Club, an enterprise without membership fees, and one whose purpose was to “make the homes and surroundings as beautiful and healthful as possible and to aid in making the city a place where contentment, comfort and prosperity shall continually abide.” Over the next several decades, the enthusiasm for gardening clubs continued to advance. Others included the Hillcrest Club (1925), Gull Prairie Club (1923) and the Kalamazoo Garden Club (1928).

Kalamazoo Garden Council

The continued popularity of clubs throughout the city and surrounding areas ultimately led to the creation of the Kalamazoo Garden Council in 1946. Originally, the council gathered ten individual clubs together. The charter clubs included AAUW Garden Club, Club of Little Gardens, Club of Friendly Gardens, Club of Sunny Gardens, Dirt Daubers, Hardy Perennial Gardeners, LLA Garden Club, Parchment Garden Club, Parkwood Garden Club, and Kalamazoo Garden Club. By the mid 1950s, the number of clubs had swelled to seventeen. The council’s primary charge was to gather the clubs together in order to organize an annual flower show. The war years had interrupted efforts to continue flower exhibitions, but with the conclusion of the war the previous year, flower enthusiasts were once again committed to staging a largescale expo that aimed to promote horticultural activities, and to fill the council’s financial coffers. The three-day show was held at the Armory building on Water Street, and gathered 2000 attendees according to newspaper reports.

“In addition to exhibits from commercial florists and nurseries and individual exhibits, other features at the show are a corsage booth, bazaar of homemade articles, food concession, table sponsored by AAUW soliciting council members, and an eighty foot garden.”

—Kalamazoo Gazette, 16 June 1946

In addition to putting on the annual flower show, the council would also provide educational programming and presentations, “improve local landscaping and to encourage studies related to horticulture and flower arranging.” In 1952, the KGC moved into the home of Blanche Babcock at 616 Locust Street. A gardening enthusiast, Babcock’s nieces Genevieve Gilmore and Dorothy Dalton donated her home and library of books to the council after Babcock’s death. The home was nicknamed Lilac Cottage, for it was this plant that the KGC pushed to have considered the city flower. In 1971, the group moved into their current location on North Westnedge, the former home of Morris Markin, the founder of Checker Motors. Over the years, the KGC has played a role in fundraising for large-scale civic projects like the development of Markin Glen Park and the Five Senses Garden.

A Shakespearean Garden

The inspiration for one of Kalamazoo’s most celebrated gardens lies in the literature of the English bard, William Shakespeare. Alice McDuffee, a resident of the Stuart Neighborhood, was so enchanted with Shakespeare’s plays and poems, and the many references to plants, that her garden became a living repository of 87 different flowers and herbs and 37 trees and shrubs. Described as a ‘fairyland’ in 1929, McDuffee had visited Stratford-on-Avon in 1912, where the idea for her garden blossomed. Upon returning to Kalamazoo, she re-read all of Shakespeare’s plays, typing a list of the plants mentioned before embarking on the development of her private garden. Today, the one-time garden is the current property of the Stuart Avenue Inn Bed & Breakfast.

Written by Ryan Gage, Kalamazoo Public Library staff, February 2024