• Organized in 1922, Member of the Garden Club of Virginia since 1924

  • Rivanna Garden Club 90th Celebration History ~ 1922 to 2012

    July 24, 2013 | History News
  • By Betsy Henneman Woodard

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    INTRODUCTION

    In addition to Follow the Green Arrow, Volumes I and II, which chronicle The Garden Club of Virginia and its member clubs from 1920-1995, The Rivanna Garden Club is fortunate to have a previous history of its own, “Rivanna Garden Club History 1922-1962”, by Mrs. Alfred Balz, Mrs. Austin Kilham, Mrs. William Phillips and Captain and Mrs. Edgar Williams, and later short recollections by Betty Henneman, Jean Printz, and Betsy Tremain,* as well as club presidents’ two-year histories. This account of our first 90 years is drawn in good part from those sources.

    Finding and reviewing 90 years of records presented challenges. Some records were missing; minutes and committee reports from well into the 1950s were handwritten, and some were water-damaged. There were inconsistencies in names and dates. But the most difficult job by far was to condense the material. It was simply impossible to do justice to the contributions of so many talented and devoted members, over nine decades, in a few pages. There is material for a history many times the length of this one - something for our centennial planners to ponder for 2022! A final challenge was to tell the story in a readable way. In an effort to do that, small details, poems and stories are sometimes given space while major events and accomplishments are touched on only in passing.

    Many Rivanna members have contributed to what follows, but special thanks are due to our president, Janice Carter, for her enthusiastic support and good advice, and to former presidents Lucy Huff, Louise Tayloe, and Jan Stalfort, who unearthed and catalogued minute books, yearbooks, ledgers, scrapbooks, clippings and assorted odds and ends. Lucy and Louise also searched records at Alderman Library, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, and the Kent-Valentine House, interviewed members, assembled the lists found in the appendix, and arranged for the layout, selection of pictures, and printing. They pored over drafts and made wise and impeccably tactful suggestions. They are very much the co-creators of this history.

    *It was not until the 1970s that married members began to be referred to in the club’s yearbooks and minutes by their first names. We have followed that convention as being appropriate to the times.

    Writing in 1955, Mrs. Harry Clemons, a Rivanna member who served as GCV Historian and Custodian of Records, urged clubs to write down their trials as well as their triumphs: “Our problems and mistakes, even our catastrophes, will make our records come alive for our new members and those who will follow us.” As will be seen in the pages that follow, Rivanna’s history is mostly one of triumphs.

    April, 2012
    Betsy Henneman Woodard

    Illustrations and Photographs

    Front cover: Lilacs, Rivanna Garden Club Lilac Test Collection, Mrs. Lois Keller, Chairman, Mount Air Farm, photograph taken by Lucy Huff
    McIntire Library, photograph courtesy of Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, page 5
    Maxfield, built by Colonel John Walker in 1764, open for the first Historic Garden Week, 1929, owned by Rivanna Garden Club member Mrs. Llewellyn McVeigh; photograph from Homes and Gardens In Old Virginia, by Francis Archer Christian and Susanne Williams Massie, page 6
    Rivanna Garden Club yearbook cover 1942-1943, page 17
    The Garden Club of Virginia Master plan for Pavilion Gardens by Alden Hopkins, page 21
    “Empress of India” lily, painting by Izabella Godlewska de Aranda (1998) page 24
    Persian wool rug hanging in the Kent Valentine House, The Garden Club of Virginia, page 30
    Ash Lawn well head, Rivanna Garden Club project, page 31
    The Garden Club of Virginia Master plan for East Lawn, North Forecourt of the Rotunda. Restoration Project, J. Patrick Graham IV, Nancy Tagahashi and the University Planning Office, 1970s, page 32
    The Garden Club of Virginia President’s photograph of Jean Printz, page 38
    Rock wall, Rivanna Garden Club Common Wealth Award, Ivy Creek Natural Area, page 39
    “Lilies of Charlottesville Fields,” The Daily Progress, June 13, 1978, page 42
    Rivanna Garden Club logo created for the Garden Club of Virginia Annual Meeting, by
    Sue Gouldman, 2006, page 43
    Hatton Ferry, photograph courtesy of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, page 46
    Inside back cover: “Garden Gate,” created and designed by Rivanna Garden Club member Thierry Drapanas

    THE RIVANNA GARDEN CLUB 1922-2012 Beginnings: 1922-1927

    The first meeting of The Rivanna Garden Club was held on November 16, 1922, with 16 ladies present. Mrs. C. E. Blue and Mrs. J. S. Davis, members of Albemarle Garden Club, were the “guiding angels” of Rivanna’s founding, attending the first meeting and lending us Albemarle’s constitution and bylaws to use as a model. A letter from Albemarle’s secretary was read, wishing us success and offering cooperation.

    At the next meeting, the name Rivanna River Garden Club was chosen (the “River” was dropped in 1924), and the club’s constitution and bylaws were adopted, stating our purpose as “the study, culture and effective planting of flowers and shrubbery.” Dues were set at $2 for active members, $3 for associates.

    Minutes of early meetings often reported only numbers present and little more than an occasional speaker or paper read, but, Mrs. Albert Balz, one of the original mem- bers, wrote later, “one does gather that the meetings were much enjoyed.” There were no winter meetings in the first year due to the condition of the roads county members would have to negotiate. Otherwise, meetings were held monthly, often at the Blue Ridge Club on East Market Street (now site of The Second Yard), but, according to the 1923 President’s Report, “the most inspiring and beneficial being those held during the summer in the gardens of some of our members.” At the March, 1923 meeting members learned that the bid for printing the new constitution and bylaws exceeded the $5 that had been set aside for that purpose, so, Mrs. Balz remembers, “we decided to wait until we were more affluent.” In May, the club held a small plant and flower sale for members, and in August, a flower show, featuring zinnias. With flower show proceeds and dues, it was possible to print the first yearbook. The number of members was set at 40.

    In November, 1923 the club celebrated its first birthday with a lecture with slides - stereoptical views of gardens, made possible by the speaker’s loan of his lantern, say the minutes. Mrs. S. A. Mitchell read “Art in Gardens,” and the new yearbooks were distributed.

    By early 1924 Mrs. Balz writes, “the subject of beautifying some spot in town arose. In April we spent $39 of our slender funds, but a flower sale on May 7 and a plant sale on May 17 helped replenish the treasury.” Minutes continued to be succinct. A proposed lecture project was given up “for good and sufficient reasons.” In July, perhaps due to the heat, “there was no special business transacted.” Most of the programs came from the members themselves, who reported on such things as the New York Flower Show or the flora of Florida or read articles of interest. Then, as now, members shared information on where to obtain plants: at one meeting, “Mrs. Davis suggested that if the club was interested in shrubs it would be well to see the manager of McCrory’s as he would get them for 10cts. a piece provided a sufficient number were ordered.”

    Rivanna continued to expand its community activities in 1924, contributing plants to the McIntire Library (now site of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society) and joining with Albemarle Garden Club to hold a flower show at the Albemarle County Fair, where a prize was awarded for the most attractive basket of cut flowers. The club began a tradition of sending each resident of the Home for Aged Women on Park Street (informally called the Old Ladies’ Home, and later known as Comyn Hall) a blooming plant at Christmastime.

    In May, 1924, Rivanna joined what the minutes refer to as the Confederated Garden Clubs of Virginia - apparently a misnomer, as Follow the Green Arrow refers simply to “The Garden Clubs of Virginia” or “the Federation.” In 1924, this was a loose federation that had been formed in May, 1920 by eight Virginia garden clubs founded between 1911 and 1919: Warrenton (the earliest Virginia club, modeled on The Garden Club of Philadelphia), Albemarle, Norfolk, James River, Fauquier and Loudoun, Danville, Dolley Madison and Augusta. Rivanna was the eleventh club to join. In 1925, the federation was renamed The Garden Club of Virginia, in recognition of the member clubs’ unity of purpose. In April, 1925 we named our first delegates to a GCV meeting. From this time on, Rivanna’s history would be closely bound up with that of GCV.

    Of course, the club had local concerns as well. Business at the March, 1925 meeting included a warning of an infestation of Japanese beetles and a report that “thoughtless boys are destroying the box bushes we planted at the library.” “The pleasures and woes of gardeners!” Mrs. Balz comments. By then, the club had 34 active, 2 honorary and 6 associate members. The 1925 election of officers must have been a lively one, at least for the parliamentarian. Mrs. Balz writes: “Can you picture a nominating committee bringing in two slates? It so happened, and Mrs. William Long succeeded herself as president.”

    In November, 1925, a motion was made and carried that the club meet every month of the year (“apparently the roads are improving!” Mrs. Balz observes). The dropping of the word “Confederated” from The Garden Club of Virginia was discussed at that meeting, and plans were made to plant evergreens at the Midway (Lewis and Clark) statue.

    Club members continued to report on travels to shows and gardens, sometimes in other parts of the world. At a 1925 meeting, Mrs. E. A. Hildreth spoke on the Chelsea Flower Show (according to the minutes, she reported that “their apples were inferior to ours, but everything else was much better, especially the grass”).

    In early 1926, the treasurer reported with a flourish that for the first time, the club had $100 in the treasury. The scale of activities picked up dramatically in May, 1926, when Rivanna and Albemarle held a two-day “Garden Fair” at Monticello that brought in over $7,000 - a princely sum at the time - to save some fine old trees on the Monticello grounds, thought to have been planted by Jefferson. Mrs. Coolidge, wife of the President, sent a sheaf of roses that were placed on the dining table.

    The minutes show that Rivanna developed a number of its procedures and rules during this time. In October, 1926, Mrs. J. S. Grasty gave a box of stationery for the use of the club (receiving “a rising vote of thanks”). It was suggested that nominators of new members make some statement as to why their candidates would make good club members. Mrs. Long suggested a $5 prize for the largest number of points won by a member in the club’s monthly flower shows. Members were asked to take colored slides of their gardens to form a collection that could be used for lectures. We contributed articles to GCV’s Garden Gossip, forerunner of The Garden Club of Virginia Journal. (Garden Gossip had been founded and edited in 1925 by Mrs. Samuel Marshall of Albemarle Garden Club and taken over a year later by GCV as its official publication.) Our annual meeting date was changed to conform to GCV’s schedule. We joined with other clubs to hear a Mrs. Fleming lecture on parliamentary law. By 1927, the yearbook would list committees for the first time - 13 of them! - yearbook, plant sales, civic improvement, conservation, pests, membership, nominating, billboards, garden slides, publicity, advertising, program and flower shows.

    It apparently proved challenging: writing some years later, Mrs. Balz says: “I have not seen a crocus there in ages, if they ever did come up.” The club was also allowed to take down an unsightly wire fence around the Stonewall Jackson statue next to the Albemarle County Courthouse, and contributed plantings at the Blue Ridge Club and Courthouse grounds. A newspaper clipping pasted in the minute book states that while in Lexington for a GCV meeting, Rivanna delegates placed a wreath at the tomb of General Lee. In 1929, the club placed a marker at Hillsboro in Loudoun County, the birthplace of Susan Koerner Wright, who, the marker says, inspired her sons, Wilbur and Orville, “to their Immortal Discovery... giving Mankind Access to the Unlimited Aerial Highway.”

    In 1927, regional flower shows were started. The first was a “Midsummer Show” held in July in the display room of the R.S. Cole Motor Company on Main Street in Charlottesville. Rivanna won 10 prizes at that show, and was represented in four of the five shows held in 1927.

    Rivanna Garden Club 90th Celebration History ~ 1922 to 2012

    In the fall of 1927, as the club moved into its sixth year, Mrs. Balz writes: “The by-laws crop up and give us trouble, but the companionship and familiar language of gardeners bridge these difficulties and we look ahead for other pests to conquer and newer flowers to try in our small corners.”

    Meanwhile, the club continued its efforts at civic beautification, replanting the damaged box bushes at the McIntire Library. The evergreens we had planted at the Lewis and Clark statue grew to the point where they became a traffic hazard at that busy intersection. They were moved to another location, and the city suggested they be replaced with a grass plot with crocuses.

    GCV Launches Historic Garden Week: 1928-1929

    When it joined GCV in 1924, Rivanna took on GCV’s purposes and activities. These had been stated at GCV’s first meeting in 1920 as follows:

    The main purpose of the federation is to gain through contact with the leaders of the various garden clubs knowledge of practical value about all plants, and all that pertains to their history, growth and increase; and the various kinds of gardens, large landscape effects, city gardens and civic planting. This increased knowledge may be gained by visits to the various well planned gardens of the different types, and through discussion and interchange of information. Then we would like to promote an interest in and co-operate with the organizations in the state which have for their object the furtherance of this knowledge, and the beautifying of cities, towns, and highways, as well as the conservation in Virginia of the rich endowment of nature in forests, plants and birds.

    From the first, GCV took its conservation and civic beautification missions seriously and showed considerable foresight and courage. As early as 1927, GCV’s president, Mrs. Massie, stressed the importance of keeping Virginia’s “streams unpolluted and its roadsides unmarred by billboards and dumpheaps.” Rivanna’s 1928- 1929 minutes mention that we worked with the GCV Billboard Committee to oppose billboards on Virginia’s highways and helped in a successful GCV fight to keep a 53-foot dam from being built in pristine Goshen Pass. The ladies of GCV were genteel but determined, as recorded in Follow the Green Arrow:

    Our founders were of an era and were typical of that era. They preferred to maneuver in gracious fashion. But they were determined, and when the gentlemen of Virginia treated them and their ideals with indulgent disdain, the ladies were known to take aggressive action. They always tried the artful approach first. They resorted to firmness only when it was the last stratagem. Their heirs and successors have not scorned the same tactics.

    This was not always easy:
    Legislators called us ‘those nosy, meddling women’; billboard advertisers made derisive reference to ‘the scenic sisters’; utility companies called us ‘a threat to progress’ at the same time automobile graveyard owners were terming us ‘a threat to free enterprise.

    The most militant waging of the campaign lends credence to the perhaps apocryphal stories of Mrs. Daniel C. Sands, with chauffeur and axe, stopping her car along the way and chopping down offending signs, and of Mrs. William R. Massie, armed with a can of paint, ‘painting out’ many an advertising slogan that disfigured the natural rocks of Albemarle County.

    After four years of this “surprising feminine insurrection all over the state,” the Virginia General Assembly reluctantly passed in 1932 the first billboard control law. The billboard fight would continue, however, for many years.

    A less contentious GCV initiative was studying significant Virginia gardens. This was also an early priority, and in 1928, the idea of Historic Garden Week was conceived. From its beginning in 1920, GCV had held annual meetings, hosted by a different club around the state each year, during which members visited area estates and gardens.

    These tours aroused interest among GCV members in helping restore the grounds of historic estates. The first such project was the garden restoration at Kenmore in Fredericksburg, home of Revolutionary War Colonel Fielding Lewis and his wife, Betty Washington Lewis, sister of George Washington. Restoration of the house had taken place from 1924-1928, and at its Board of Governors meeting on May 18, 1928 GCV decided to ask “for the privilege of doing the planting at Kenmore.” At luncheon the same day, a group at the head table discussed raising the necessary funds by holding a visiting garden week throughout Virginia the following spring, charging a fee at each garden. A committee went to work immediately. A letter was read at Rivanna’s September, 1928 meeting proposing the idea and asking for the names of members willing to open their gardens for 10 days the following spring.

    The first Historic Garden Week in Virginia was held from April 29-May 10, 1929. Rivanna was responsible for Maxfield and Ridgeway, both owned by Rivanna members; also open in our area were Farmington (until shortly before then a private residence owned by our member Mrs. Warner Wood), Morven, Monticello, Michie Tavern, Enniscorthy, Round Top, Tallwood and Estouteville. A handsome guidebook was compiled, containing interesting bits of history and illustrations of the historic homes. Maps and folders were provided, and, says Follow the Green Arrow, “every detail attended to for the comfort and guidance of visitors.” The public leapt at the rare opportunity to see old Virginia homes and gardens, and over $14,000 was raised. Governor Byrd sent a congratulatory telegram to GCV: “I know no movement in Virginia that has done more to advance the interests of the state, and to attract the most desirable class of visitors.”

    The flavor of the earliest years of Historic Garden Week is captured in Garden Club Pilgrimage to Virginia, a delightful account of a weeklong 1930 Garden Week tour by a group of five friends from Pennsylvania. Knowledgeable about houses and gardens, the ladies enjoyed themselves hugely. One of the group, Mrs. Thomas C. Wurts, kept a journal of what they saw and a history of each place they visited. Given to GCV many years later by her daughter, and published by GCV in 2000, the journal concludes:

    ...we trust that there will be another Garden Club of Virginia tour to restore another famous garden. The first year, 1929, the purpose was the restoration of Kenmore; 1930, the remaking of the gardens at Stratford Hall. Let us hope that in 1931 there will be a need for money for some other famous place, and that the kind hostesses of Virginia are not wearying of hospitality.

    There were, indeed, many famous places in Virginia in need of restoration. In 1931, Susanne Williams Massie and Frances Archer Christian of GCV published Homes and Gardens of Old Virginia as a guide to historic estates and other notable sites for tourists visiting Virginia gardens. The introduction to the book, by the journalist and historian Douglas Southall Freeman, noted that some of these gardens could be traced to the earliest English settlements:

    Some of the Virginia gardens described in this book contain perennials that have been growing there for generations. Flowers that Queen Elizabeth loved in her youth were brought over to Virginia by the first adventurers and were planted by the doors of their firstcrude homes in the wilderness. The very odor of the rue and of the cumin, the thyme and the annis that arises from Shakespeare’s pages pervades many of the Virginia gardens to this day.

    By the late 1920s, Rivanna had truly come of age: in 1928, we hosted the GCV Annual Meeting in the Rose Room of the Monticello Hotel. Guests were offered a tour of nine area estates, including Rose Hill, where a rock garden with rare plants was especially admired. Our Mrs. Sharshall Grasty was elected Corresponding Secretary of GCV at that meeting; not long after, Mrs. William Phillips was appointed GCV Chairman of Plant Pest Control, an office she would hold for 20 years. Mrs. Harry Smith and Mrs. William Long were listed as available GCV flower show judges.

    Hoping to encourage the next generation of gardeners, the club formed the Rivanna Garden Club Juniors, consisting of a group of twelve young daughters of club members, and started a garden contest for small gardens tended by children.
    Rivanna in the 1930s: Budgets and Test Gardens

    The 1929 stock market crash occurred only months after the first Historic Garden Week, but while funds were to be scarce during the Depression years, the club carried on with undiminished energy. Follow the Green Arrow says Rivanna’s history from 1930- 1940 could be described in capsule as “With Horticulture...Have Test Gardens,” and subtitled as “Our Love Affair with the GCV Test Gardens, with Financial Undertones.” It is worth recalling Rivanna’s important role in developing six GCV test gardens:

    Roses

    In 1927, GCV had begun developing a plan to provide authoritative information on roses tested in Virginia. In 1928, the GCV Rose Test Chairman wrote: “Until a fund can be established for this purpose, each rose lover must buy his own plants; but the Chairman, by ordering them all together, will be able to secure the finest stock at the minimum cost.” Rivanna appointed a Rosarian at its June, 1928 meeting and sent $12 as its share of the new GCV fund. The fund had difficulties, and in February, 1929 we sent $5 more “to cover a small deficit.” In October the same year, we sent another $15 to help support the test roses. In May, 1930, we sent “25 cents per capita” for the test garden. In addition, members were buying their own test collections, reporting on planting, spraying and fertilizing. In 1934, the GCV president wrote all clubs asking “Is the Rose Test Garden giving its money’s worth?” Rivanna, all but financially exhausted, voted: “We favor the Rose Test Garden but agree that the budget should be kept.” Soon after, our member Mrs. William Long became GCV Rose Test Chairman, with a main garden in Charlottesville and four different regional gardens in different parts of the state. Mrs. Long advised all Rivanna members to visit the garden of our member Mrs. Henry Cunningham at “Airslie,” in Keswick, because “She has the best rose garden in Virginia.”

    The years of austerity only seem to have honed our club’s resolve and skill as rosarians for, as Follow the Green Arrow notes, “Rivanna, toughened in this stern school, has grown blue ribbon winners ever since - Best in Show, Best Test Collection, and the Harris Cup came three times in a row to Captain and Mrs. Edgar M. Williams.”

    Daffodils

    In 1930, GCV sent a letter proposing that a Daffodil Committee be organized and that each club undertake to purchase and care for a test collection of 50 varieties, ten bulbs of each variety, the price ranging from $5 to $50 wholesale. If 12 clubs coope- rated, the committee could obtain about 450 bulbs for $80 per club. At Rivanna’s June meeting that year, the treasurer reported $105.57 on hand. Many suggestions were made as to how to finance the daffodil venture. It was finally agreed that funds would be taken from the treasury and reimbursed through the sale of bulbs to members. When the bulb shipment arrived, four members immediately purchased $40 worth. Rivanna won nine blue ribbons at the first daffodil show in 1931.

    Miss Virginia Blue was appointed Rivanna’s Daffodil Test Chairman and for 13 years carried on successfully the culture of the bulbs and their sale to members. Miss Blue herself maintained a self-supporting test garden. In her memory, an annual award known as the Virginia Hyland Blue Award (later renamed the Virginia Blue-Hazel Phillips prize) is given for excellence in daffodil cultivation. By 1946, there would be 360 varieties of daffodil in Rivanna’s test collection.

    Lilacs

    In 1933, in an effort to stimulate gardening innovation and knowledge, GCV asked that each member club choose a particular shrub or flower for intensive propa- gation. The idea was presented at Rivanna’s December, 1933 meeting, but, Mrs. Balz recalls, “total silence followed.” At the January, 1934 meeting there was another period of silence, after which Mrs. Henry Cunningham suggested that the “wall flower” might be suitable. Finally, a decision was reached at the February meeting. According to the minutes: “The choosing of a special flower for this club to specialize in was again brought up for full and free discussion. Iris, lupine, lilac, delphinium, columbine and chrysanthemum all had their champions. It was put to the ballot and lilacs won. Price lists for new varieties will be procured and each member is asked to begin on the very pleasant and fragrant employment of lilac propagation.” At Mrs. George Michie’s suggestion at that same meeting, the lilac was chosen as Rivanna’s club flower and emblem.

    Rivanna’s lilac test garden, the first and only one among GCV clubs, has existed since 1935.

    Lilies

    In September, 1936, a letter from a former GCV president urging the study of liliums was read at a Rivanna meeting. A motion was passed that we take up the study of liliums as a club project. During the next two months, Rivanna planted 25 “second size” lily bulbs, and by 1938 was experimenting in raising lilies from seed. Follow the Green Arrow notes that during these years, “both the Walker and Harris Challenge Cups lived [at Rivanna].”

    Herbs

    In 1937, two Rivanna members, Mrs. Joseph Musselman and Miss Helen Cunningham, drove to Bethesda, Maryland to call upon Mrs. G. C. F. Bratenahl at the Weathered Oak Herb Farm for the purpose of inviting her to speak to the club about herbs. Mrs. Bratenahl, one of the founders of the Herb Society of America in 1933, had started the Cottage Herb Garden at the Cathedral in Washington and developed a “home industry” in herbs.

    Being very shy and reserved, instead of coming to speak to the club, Mrs. Bratenahl sent a letter and two flats of small potted herbs. According to the minutes of the club’s January, 1938 meeting:

    The subject for the afternoon was herbs and Mrs. Musselman read a very delightful ‘herb letter’ written especially for us by Mrs. G. C. F. Bratenahl. Accompanying and illustrating the lecture was an exhibit of 78 small potted herbs, some few jars of dried herbs and a comprehensive collection of books dealing with the subject from Culpepper’s Herbal and a reprint of Gerard, to the modern pamphlet by Helen Noyes Webster. The program seemed to be enjoyed. It was voted that if it were financially possible and if there were sufficient interest, that the club have an herb garden. Mrs. Musselman was asked to have this garden for the club. Following the regular meeting of the club, the Directors met and voted ten dollars for this project to be given at this time to Mrs. Bratenahl showing our appreciation for all she had done for us, the herbs to be acquired from her for the garden the middle of the coming May.

    In May, Mrs. Musselman brought the herbs from Bethesda to add to her own, making about 30 plants for the beginning of our herb garden. This was the first herb garden in the GCV, and for many years the only one. In less than two months, the report was “The herb garden is in excellent condition and the fragrance wonderful.”

    In December, 1939, the restoration of the garden at Monticello was under way, and Rivanna asked to be given the privilege of raising the herb slips for the Monticello Herb Garden.

    Mrs. Musselman was to remain in charge of the herb garden for 20 years. Minutes from a 1949 meeting quote her as reporting: “Herbs have survived in spite of stiff competition from chickweed.” The minutes continue: “Mrs. Musselman’s report on aromatic herbs always fires one’s imagination with the possibility of spicy savors - food made perfect with that indefinable flavor given by a dash of rare herbs like those in our garden.” At the end of Mrs. Musselman’s 20-year tenure, the club boasted five herb gardens. During the 1950s, we were asked by the Herb Society of America for slides of our herb garden.

    Iris

    Two decades later, in 1957, Rivanna launched a sixth test garden when Mrs. Charles Woltz, Horticulture Chairman, asked if some of the club’s horticulture funds could be used to purchase iris. Members were enthusiastic, and Mrs. Woltz began the first GCV Iris Test Garden. (She recalls having first been encouraged by Mrs. Balz, who generously offered iris and daffodils from her garden to any Rivanna members who wanted them.)

    Along with its test garden committees, the club had a wildflower committee for some years during the 1930s. Besides its unique work on test gardens, Rivanna continued its preservation and beautification efforts during the 1930s. When the Humble Oil Company bought the property at the corner of High Street and Lexington Avenue for a filling station, the historic “Tarleton Oak” - believed to be over 300 years old, and long rumored to have been the place where British Colonel Banastre Tarleton’s army unit camped in 1781 while plotting to capture Thomas Jefferson and other legislators meeting in session here - was to be cut down. We helped get a reprieve for the handsome tree until the Humble Oil headquarters could be told what a catastrophe its loss would be. Humble Oil, sensitive to public relations, gladly saved the tree, wrote a cover story for its company magazine, and named the station “The Tarleton Oak,” placing a marker. We also participated in the

    GCV campaign to “Plant Virginia in Dogwoods,” starting a nursery of 100 dogwoods and distributing the trees to local residents to plant in their front yards. We contributed to a major tree-planting by the City-County Beautification Commission along Routes 29 and 250.

    In December, 1937, we were asked to provide and decorate a Christmas tree for the city in Lee Park. The minutes tell us what happened:

    The President put the matter in charge of the Flower Show Committee. Mrs. Kelsey carefully selected and donated a beautifully shaped tree from her own woods and it was put up and [to be] decorated December 20th, the lights and labor being furnished by the city. Mrs. Gibson in her usual wonderful way helped out when on the day to decorate sickness practically wiped out the committee. The tree was sprayed with $2.00 worth of white material given by the Charlottesville Lumber Company. The Ritchie Electric Company lent the star for the top and they likewise with Woolworth, Grants and the Virginia Public Services filled the 62 sockets with white bulbs. The tree was lovely.

    During the 1934 GCV annual meeting, hosted by Albemarle Garden Club, Rivanna entertained at tea at Mrs. Frederick Twyman’s home. According to Garden Gossip, “the flowers were almost the equivalent of a flower show.”

    Amid all these activities, the club offered in March, 1935 to undertake as a special restoration project at the University the planning and planting of the garden in back of Pavilion VI, the “Romance Pavilion” - intriguingly named, apparently because the Romance Languages department was once temporarily located there. This was to be a five-year project. The plan agreed to at a meeting with President Newcomb read in part: “The association with Jefferson’s plans and interests will be the deciding factor in all selection of plants. We understand that the retaining walls of this garden, as of other University enclosures, are kept in repair by the University, and that our responsibility is with the garden proper. We should like to have the box tree, coffee tree, peach tree and paulownia tree left. The ailanthus saplings will not be needed, and we should be glad to have them all removed from the larger central grass plot.”

    An annual “Christmas sale of winter decorations” became a Rivanna institution during the 1930s. Although small Christmas sales seem to have been held earlier, the club’s December program every year beginning in 1936 was entirely devoted to a Christmas sale, held for many years in the parish hall of Christ Episcopal Church. (In 1973, the sale became known as the Christmas Mini-Bazaar, having by then grown to include food, handicrafts and high-quality white elephants. In later years, the Bazaar - no longer “Mini”- would sometimes include raffles and silent auctions.)

    Rivanna’s members in these years also had a literary bent. Each January or February for several years, when gardens were dormant, the monthly program was a “Literary Competition,” apparently to encourage submissions to Garden Gossip. At the January, 1937 meeting, the program featured 13 entries, including a play, a horticultural paper, essays and poetry. Plants were given as prizes. Mrs. Bean, who lived in Pavilion X before its restoration, wrote in her essay that “Visiting celebrities and commencement orators never let us forget that the University of Virginia is founded on Jefferson Democracy, but from my personal experience, I would say that it was founded on wire grass and trumpet vine.” But she concluded in good humor with this poem:

    A little quaint old garden ‘tis - a maze
    Of winding paths and flowerbeds with box All interlaced with old world flowers Spicy verbena, jasmine and phlox.
    A little quaint old garden, ‘tis, that’s all
    To any stranger who therein may roam
    To one who loves each frond, each fragrant bud This garden is a part of life, is home.

    A resolution was passed that “meetings of the club hereafter be as simple as possible, with only one article of food and one kind of drink provided.” The yearbook was reduced to a single folded sheet with a “V” for victory logo. Members were updated at meetings about Red Cross work and wool for knitting. Monthly programs included topics such as “Wood for War” and “Food for Peace.” Despite meeting less often, we remained active, focusing on projects that would contribute directly or indirectly to the war effort. These ranged from planting vegetable gardens to sending seed, food and clothing to Europe.

    In May, 1942 we hosted the GCV annual meeting. Highlights included dinner at Farmington with the Virginia Players performing “Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight,” a luncheon at Gallison Hall, home of our member Mrs. Julio Galban, and tea at Pavilion II, home of our member Mrs. Ivey Lewis. A GCV member commented: “The pavilion gardens were perfectly charming restful spots of beauty, enclosed by the famous serpentine walls, in which one found it hard to realize the suffering and sorrow of the outside world.”

    1940s: The War Years

    All attention turned to the war in Europe as the 1940s began. Historic Garden Week 1941 was held to benefit war-torn England, with $19,000 sent to help rebuild Plymouth, the district Lady Astor represented in Parliament (Lady Astor’s childhood home in Albemarle County, Mirador, having previously been opened for Garden Week).

    During the war years, Rivanna met less frequently. To save gasoline, meetings were held at central places that could be reached by public conveyance.

    By this time we were old hands at test gardens, and we readily branched out into Victory Gardens. One in particular was a Children’s Victory Garden - a vegetable garden for children, co-sponsored by Rivanna and the City Recreation Department. We rented a plot of land near Moore’s Creek on Monticello Road for $18 and appropriated funds for seeds and fertilizers. Twenty children were selected by the Recreation Department to tend the gardens. In March, 1942 the children planted their seeds in flats, later transplanting the seedlings into rich creek bottom land. A club committee helped the children stake their plots of land and supervised the fertilizing and cultivating. The children gave vegetables to their families and to the Children’s Home, having gained experience in the rudiments of gardening and learned surprising things: one child allowed that “he had expected to find his ripened radishes tied in bunches and waving on a bush.”

    Rivanna worked with Albemarle Garden Club to hold annual Victory Garden Fairs in the Old Armory in 1943 and 1944. Prizes were given based on the industry and interest shown by the gardener and the number of exhibits entered. The fairs included demonstrations on easy ways to store foods and root crops for winter use and how to preserve foods by dehydration. As described in a 1942-1944 entry in Follow the Green Arrow:

    Gardens are Victory Gardens: all emphasis is upon vegetables. Food, it is said, will win the war. Canning is the vogue. Even Garden Gossip carries recipes from efficient members. The fashion in war effort was skill.

    Early in the war, Rivanna sent a gift of $100 to the Queen Charlotte Maternity Hospital in England, and also sent seed to England. In December, 1942, a letter was read to the club from a Mrs. Jones of Kent, England, thanking us for our gift of vegetable seeds the previous spring and praising particularly the very fine crop of onions and carrots. Again in 1943, we appropriated $15 for seeds to go to England. We also joined several other clubs in making monthly shipments of cocoa, chocolate, canned milk, canned fruit, corn syrup and peanut butter to Drummond Restaurant in Lambeth, London, to aid the poor and bombed-out people of that suburb. The restaurant was named in honor of Victoria Drummond, the only woman engineer in the British Merchant Navy. Mrs. Winston Churchill expressed interest in the project and the restaurant. The gifts of food were carried free from Norfolk by British freighters.

    To raise money, a GCV member designed and printed Christmas cards for members’ use. The card sold for 10 cents and eventually earned $4,000, used for patriotic purposes. A first printing of a small cookbook earned $812, and a second edition of 1,000 was ordered. All profits went to famine relief. GCV was a sponsoring and contributing member of USO.

    The Office of Defense Transportation limited travel during wartime, and GCV annual meetings were suspended after 1942. Social activities were kept to a minimum, and no formal parties were given. When GCV could not meet to celebrate its 25th anniversary in May of 1945, a member of the Blue Ridge Garden Club suggested that to mark the occasion, each GCV member club might donate a war bond. This produced $2,950 for the barren GCV treasury. Rivanna sent two $25 bonds. Later, in August, 1947, a report was read giving the names and descriptions of men and women in Wales and England, seven in all, who had been helped by our contribution to the GCV Anniversary Fund.

    In October, 1945, restrictions were lifted and the first GCV meeting since 1942 was held in Roanoke. Flower shows were resumed, but Historic Garden Week remained dormant. GCV and its members had been buying war bonds through the war years, and the total was announced as over $1,000,000.

    In 1946, responding to the Famine Relief Fund appeal, GCV adopted an entire French village in Normandy, Ver-sur-Mer, as part of the relief effort. Not far from the point from which William the Conqueror set sail to invade England in 1066, Ver-sur-Mer is near Omaha Beach, where the 29th Division debarked, and near the cemetery where 40,000 American soldiers are buried. The village was bombed seven times by Allied planes because of strong German defenses there. GCV obtained a list of what was most needed - blankets, food, clothing and hot-water bottles - and found that gifts could be sent free of charge through the American Aid to France provided weight did not exceed three hundred pounds. Rivanna learned only on October 2 that boxes must be packed by October 10, and through superhuman effort got a shipment off on time. A later report says that we contributed a generous amount to the 14,000 pounds of clothing, food and supplies sent to Ver-sur-Mer by GCV. The town later placed a marble plaque on the wall of the restored village church with the names of GCV members’ sons and husbands who lost their lives in the war.

    Historic Garden Week finally resumed in 1947. As a GCV Garden Week Co- Chairman wrote, picking up where we had left off was not an easy task:

    In we plunged, shoved gently but oh so firmly by the committee....All together we sank to the bottom into the murky records of thirteen Garden Weeks through 1941, five years gone and a hundred years forgotten. The files were brought out of Mrs. Fairfax’s hall closet; the typewriter, itself a patient in serious condition, was found at the Crippled Children’s Hospital. From old lists [we] wrote to various owners inviting them to open their homes.

    Helped by the Highway Department, which produced a superb map and printed the green arrows, and by perfect weather, Historic Garden Week 1947 was a magnificent success.

    The late 1940s were a time of transition everywhere. There was a new informality, but prewar traditions had not disappeared. Dawn Woltz recalls that a year or two after her arrival in Charlottesville in 1949, while working in her garden and looking after three small children, she was called on by two ladies in hats and white gloves, unannounced. They turned out to be Mrs. Beams and Mrs. Mitchell, who (she later learned) had come to “look her over” for membership in Rivanna.

    The 1950s: Pavilion Gardens and Friendly Gardens

    In 1948, GCV Restoration Committee members had met with Dr. Edwin Betts, an honorary Rivanna member and husband of our member Mary Hall Betts, to talk about the badly deteriorated Pavilion gardens at Mr. Jefferson’s University. Dr. Betts, a distin- guished professor of biology and botany at the University and a historian of Jefferson’s gardens, had also done much of the research necessary for the authentic reconstruction of the gardens at Monticello a decade earlier. The Restoration Chairman wrote:

    On July 5th, the hottest day of this hot summer, Mrs. Gilliam and I met Dr. Betts at the University of Virginia. With the Peter Maverick drawing of 1822, we were shown the old gardens. We saw the crumpling walls around these once charming little gardens, through which a concrete road now runs. Dr. Betts was anxious that we use our money, not to plant just a few ‘selected gardens,’ but to restore the wall first, and then plant the gardens. This has been approved by the Board, who found it historic, interesting and feasible.

    This was an ambitious project, for little remained of the gardens as they existed in Jefferson’s time. Many changes had been made to the buildings and walls (including the famous serpentine walls) over the years, and there was no record of Jefferson’s own ideas for the gardens’ design. Jefferson had intended that the Pavilion residents design, plant and maintain their own gardens. In the years since 1824, some of the gardens had been carefully tended while others were used for utilitarian purposes such as smokehouses and sheds for small animals. Alden Hopkins, landscape architect of Colonial Williamsburg, drew up a master plan for the entire project. Since funds were limited, the project was undertaken in two stages. The West Lawn gardens, having an easier topography, were landscaped between 1948-1952, and the East Lawn gardens in the following decade, between 1960-1965. The restoration was funded by Historic Garden Week proceeds.

    The gardens on the West Lawn were presented to the University on April 24, 1952. Besides Dr. and Mrs. Betts, Rivanna’s members included a number of University faculty wives, several of whom lived in the Lawn Pavilions, and the Lawn project was a source of special interest and pride to our club. We were given entire responsibility for showing University properties during Garden Week.

    While interest in large estate gardens continued, life in the years after the war became more casual, with less emphasis on hats and gloves and more interest in low- maintenance, smaller gardens of simple design. In 1950, Rivanna members were intrigued by the suggestion at a GCV meeting that a group of small gardens be opened for Garden Week. Mrs. Charles Marvin, Rivanna’s Garden Week chairman, said: “Many beautiful estates around us with their impressive gardens ... are beyond the dreams of most of us, except to admire. It is to the small garden, tucked away where no passing tourist can see its treasures that we must turn.” It was Mrs. Marvin who thought of the name “Friendly Gardens,” used to this day.

    Inquiries and inspections revealed a great many small and very attractive gardens in Charlottesville. (It was noted that visiting these small gardens without making any direct request or commitment required diplomacy, but that most of the difficulty eventually sprang from the modesty of the owner, who usually felt her garden “not quite ready.”) Rivanna opened the first Friendly Gardens during the 1951 Garden Week - five properties located on Wertland Street, Cargil Lane, Rugby Road, Blue Ridge Road and Farmington, three of which were owned by Rivanna members (Mrs. Phillips, Mrs. Keister and Mrs. Kilham). A block ticket for the five gardens cost $1. Mrs. Kilham, owner of the Farmington garden, described the appeal of the Friendly Gardens to a changing society:

    Because of the great spread of interest in gardening and in garden clubs and because of the ‘new leisure’ of office workers and of women liberated by modern household equipment for more freedom out of doors, the type of Garden Week visitor has changed. There is a great group who live the years of the Colonial past and who really get the feel of the early beautiful homes and gardens and who as a result receive a great inspiration. It is a great experience to see the stately gardens but it is discouraging to try to translate much of it to the small grounds. The greater group of visitors is seeking not only beauty but also suggestions and ideas they can use on their own back yards.

    Meanwhile, GCV launched new conservation and beautification programs. In 1953, GCV and the Garden Club of America, acting through a special committee, urged a “Crusade to Save the Dogwood in Virginia,” by protecting dogwood within 300 feet of highways and restricting the cutting of trees less than five inches in diameter. Members were updated on the possible dangers of DDT. Arrangements often included a bee hovering over the flowers. An enterprising contestant had the foresight to capture a bee in her garden and preserve it in her freezer, but the bee came unfrozen and escaped.

    In 1956, GCV proposed to member clubs that yet more gardens be opened during Garden Week. Mrs. Emerson Spies, Rivanna’s Garden Week Chairman, suggested that some small gardens in the country, to be called “Country Gardens,” be opened. She intended that Rivanna would take the lead, but the project was assigned instead to the Charlottesville Garden Club, which had just joined GCV. (The Charlottesville Garden Club, which Rivanna helped organize in 1949 - just as Albemarle had helped us on our way in 1922 - became a GCV member club in 1957.)

    In the years since GCV test gardens became established in the 1930s, flower shows had become more elaborate. State flower shows hosted by Rivanna were not uneventful. A famous incident was the “Rape of the Empress,” which occurred at a large lily show in the Farmington Ballroom in 1954. Dawn Woltz, who was serving as staging chairman, recalls that just before the show opened, it was discovered that every speck of the pollen of a prize new lily, the “Empress of India,” had been surreptitiously removed, presumably for hybridization. Betty Henneman, looking back in 1985 recalled another show with a class for arrangements in the Flemish manner.

    During these years, Rivanna maintained an active program of local civic planting and conservation. We planted dogwood on Jefferson Park Avenue islands and, competing with other local garden clubs, won a prize for the best design for planting a small triangle at Peoples National Bank’s Emmet Street Branch. The $100 prize money was sent to Nature Camp at Vesuvius toward the purchase of a slide projector. We saved trees on High Street from removal as we had saved the Tarleton Oak years before. We vigorously opposed the building of a motel in the restricted area around Court Square, to preserve its colonial atmosphere, and were active in the passage of billboard legislation. We tried in vain to save the old Norris House on High Street from being razed to make a city parking lot.

    In 1957, as noted above, Mrs. Charles Woltz established the first GCV Iris Test Garden.

    Rivanna in the 1960s: East Lawn and the Kilham Garden

    In 1960, the second phase of garden reconstruction at the University began in the East Lawn and Range area. Little trace remained of the original East Lawn gardens dating to 1823. Archeological research confirmed where the serpentine walls had been located, and there was extensive study of Jeffersonian era gardens such as those at Castle Hill and Mount Vernon, as well as Jefferson’s own books on gardening. GCV presented the restored East Lawn gardens to the University on May 4, 1965, with a booklet containing a drawing of the landscape design, commentary from architectural historians, and a plant list for each restored garden. At the presentation ceremony, pink geraniums were used lavishly in pots in the new gardens “to compensate for their newness.” GCV received glowing praise for the gardens in news articles and editorials. A GCV member, feeling at last vindicated, wrote in the Journal:

    Throughout our 45 years of existence, we have been discussed. The brickbats and unprintable comments that have come our way from the billboard advertisers and the automobile graveyard owners were endured because we knew that someday there would be a May 4, and there was. We basked in editorials that referred to ‘the immense debt that the people of the Commonwealth owe to The Garden Club of Virginia.’ ...In brief, on May 4th, we enjoyed Our Finest Hour!

    While work on the East Lawn was in progress, the West Lawn Pavilion gardens were open for Garden Week in 1963 with the Faculty Wives Club serving as hostesses. For the first time, two Garden Week showplaces, Pavilion IX and the Colonnade Club, were open at night.

    In 1962, Honorary Member Captain Edgar (“Buster”) Williams, who with his wife had for many years been part of every activity of Rivanna and GCV, assembled and coordinated an excellent history of Rivanna’s first 40 years, much of which is incorporated in these pages. Well suited to the job of historian, Captain Williams had, following a career commanding a submarine during World War I, become a fine horticulturalist, an active participant in GCV activities, and an English professor.

    Rivanna was a charter member of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Beautification Commission, organized in 1963 with a starting gift of $400 from Sears Roebuck. We worked hard on our assignments during the 1960s, but were not invariably successful. The group planted 96 concrete flower boxes with pink geraniums and white petunias in front of Main Street businesses (these were the days before Main Street became a pedestrian mall). It is recorded that Mrs. Charles Woltz and Mrs. Edgar Williams “almost single-handedly tried to keep life in these boxes, but the intense heat of Charlottesville summers, the lackadaisical watering by the merchants, plus the aphids, caused the petunias, azaleas and geraniums to languish and die. The project was abandoned in 1966.” During these years we also urged the continued restriction of signs in the downtown area.

    The Beautification Commission asked us to participate in a 1966 project to landscape the Albemarle Courthouse and Jackson Park, directed by landscape architect Meade Palmer.

    As the Interstate Highway System was being built, we supported a bill to control billboard advertising on Virginia’s interstates. At the request of the GCV Highway Zoning Chairman, and joined by the Albemarle and Charlottesville clubs, we conducted a survey of illegal automobile graveyards in our area, finding two: according to the minutes, one operator cooperated and the other was tried and convicted. We battled to keep McIntire Park from being absorbed into a school site; planted periwinkle and hemlock at the Rescue Squad building; contributed to plantings at the new TrosDale Home for Boys; and contributed books on horticulture and gardening to the McIntire Library and a collection of books on herbs (in honor of Mrs. Musselman) to the Gordon Avenue branch library. We provided landscaping advice to Miller School. We regularly delivered Christmas poinsettias or corsages to the ladies at Comyn Hall and flowers to University Hospital (receiving a citation for bringing flowers enough for 418 arrangements in 1964-1966), and sent a child to Nature Camp each summer.

    Garden Week continued to thrive in the 1960s, although challenges were sometimes noted. According to the club’s 1964-1966 history, “There were the usual complaints from members about putting flowers in the Rotunda and, in 1966, the people on Wayside Place who opened their gardens as the Friendly Gardens refused to stay open the entire week. Will we ever go back to being open the entire week?”
    In May, 1966, we hosted the GCV annual meeting. Highlights included a dinner at Wilton, Miss Jean Printz’s home, a candlelight tour of the

    Pavilion home and recently restored garden of our member Mrs. Gordon Whyburn, and cocktails at Gallison Hall, home of our member Mrs. Julio Galban. Frederick Nichols of the Architecture School spoke on Jefferson as landscape architect. Rivanna presented GCV with a collection of slides for use in the classification of daffodils.

    Also in 1966, which must have been an exceptionally busy year, Rivanna created a garden in memory of Mrs. Austin Kilham at St. Anne’s School, which her daughter had attended. Designed by Mrs. Harry Smith and known as the Susie Badger Kilham Study Garden, the garden was presented to St. Anne’s on June 28, 1967. It was described as follows: “The garden features a stone patio with plantings of boxwood, azaleas, lilacs, hollies, and tree peonies behind a stone retaining wall. An L-shaped bed set in the flagstone area holds pyramidal box, azaleas and candytuft. Our outstanding gardeners, headed by Mrs. Myron Tremain, worked here, and Mr. Kilham lavished plant material from his garden. It is a beautiful spot and seldom unoccupied.” Mrs. Kilham, whose beautiful Farmington garden had for many years been open for all of Garden Week, would have been pleased that the Susie Badger Kilham Garden was open for Garden Week 1968.

    In 1968, Rivanna member Dawn Woltz had the distinction of discovering a previously unnamed boxwood. During a trip to Blandy Farm with University Dean and biology professor B. F. D. (“Dee”) Runk, she saw two unusually tall, narrow, upright, pyramidal boxwoods whose origins were unknown. She asked to make cuttings, and later gave each GCV club horticulture chairman a rooted cutting. Not having been able to identify it, she asked the National Arboretum whether it could be named “Dee Runk.” After studying the boxwood for several years, the Arboretum agreed it was new and could be so named. Buxus sempervirens ‘Dee Runk’ now grows throughout Virginia and elsewhere.

    The 1970s: Rivanna Marks 50 Years

    We began the 1970s with a year-long project to beautify sections of the US 29- 250 bypass by planting 34 pink dogwoods and white pine trees at the bypass interchanges. Dawn Woltz, Pat McFarland and Jean Printz led the project, which was completed in May, 1971.

    The following year, we celebrated our 50th anniversary with a “Sentimental Journey,” chartering a bus to Richmond for a luncheon at the Kent-Valentine House. This was no ordinary trip: the 18-room Kent-Valentine House had been purchased only the year before to be GCV’s headquarters. A Virginia Historic Landmark dating to 1845, and the last mansion in downtown Richmond surrounded by trees, the Kent- Valentine House was acquired from the Valentine family (it had originally been built by Horace Kent) under the terms of a historic easement that ensured the building would remain largely unchanged. The Valentine family donated mirrors and oriental rugs, as well as an Empire sofa and a bed that was in the home when it was occupied by the family. Other gifts included Hepplewhite sofas, a pair of crystal chandeliers, a Federal sideboard, and Haviland china. An October, 1972 article in the Richmond News Leader noted that “The fifty-two year history of the Garden Club of Virginia will finally have a permanent home under one roof after years of safe keeping in the homes of past presidents.” At our anniversary celebration, we presented a gift of over $1,000 to the GCV Endowment Fund in honor of the ladies who founded Rihanna. By this time, we had 50 active, 11 associate, 7 honorary and 3 non-resident members.

    Minutes show that we did not rest on our laurels after marking our 50th. During the 1970s we worked with other clubs to landscape the new Piedmont Virginia Community College (described in 1973 as a “stark brick edifice in a sea of red mud”); planted dogwoods and pines along the Route 250 - Interstate 64 interchange; fought litter battles; worked to prevent erosion at Camp Holiday Trails; helped landscape Martha Jefferson Hospital, the Bicentennial Center, and the Brownsville Elementary School; gave planters with Korean boxwood and ivy to the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society Museum, Christmas flowers to Comyn Hall, decorations to residents at The Cedars, and shrubbery, bulbs and ground covers to several fraternities (“to improve their places”); established an Ash Lawn Garden; gave numerous books to Alderman Library as a Susan Metcalf Musselman Memorial; sent campers to Nature Camp at Vesuvius each year; won assorted trophies; and delighted in Dawn Woltz’s publication of The Flowers Grown and Shown at Monticello. Five Rivanna members held GCV positions. Through the Council of Garden Clubs, we helped purchase a tree for Queen Elizabeth to plant at the Bicentennial Center.

    In 1974, the three local GCV clubs, led by our members Alida Davison and Betty Strider, reorganized Garden Week as a joint venture, sharing jobs and responsibilities for securing gardens, selling advertising, publicity, distribution of guidebooks, etc., on a rotating basis. A special University Day that year included the President’s House at Carr’s Hill, the Pavilions, Bayly Museum, and selected student rooms on the Lawn, all decorated in floral finery.

    The Friendly Gardens continued to be popular, but sometimes caused anxiety to Garden Week chairmen as well as garden owners. Carolyn Wilcox and Evelyn Marshall recall worriedly inspecting a somewhat disheveled Friendly Garden only days before it was to open for Garden Week 1975. The owner was overheard to say “look, here comes the Panic Squad!” Returning a few days later, they were relieved to find that a massive cleanup had occurred and the garden was most attractive. (Carolyn and Evelyn jointly received the Mrs. Edgar M. Williams Silver Bowl for their good work that year, which they well remember because the bowl, temporarily stored by Evelyn for safekeeping in her linen closet, was the only item of silver in her house to survive a burglary.)

    In 1975, each of the 45 GCV clubs was asked to make a needlepoint square for a 9 x 12 foot Persian wool rug for the Kent-Valentine House. Murr Wieboldt designed Rivanna’s square - a lovely lilac, labeled RIVANNA 1922 - and Thelma Barnes worked the canvas. It was also in 1975 that GCV published Historic Virginia Gardens, a history of the 23 restorations funded to that time.

    In 1976, our member Elisabeth Nolting received GCV’s DeLacy Gray Medal for Conservation for her efforts in winning National Historic Landmark designation for the Green Springs area of Louisa County and successfully opposing construction of a large state prison facility there. Green Springs was described at the time by Frederick Hartt, University of Virginia Art Department Chairman, as “a bowl landscape of the greatest beauty, ringed with twenty-six handsome farm houses, some dating from the original settlement of the area in the early 1700s and none later than 1860 - gems of American architecture, worth preserving just as Williamsburg was preserved.” Miss Nolting was cited by GCV as “a guiding force in the struggle to save her area, Green Springs, from environmental destruction.”

    At the 1977 annual meeting, the club presented a new trophy to GCV in honor of longtime members Captain and Mrs. Edgar M. Williams, recognizing their 30 years of participation in flower shows, horticulture, conservation efforts and civic affairs, and their unselfish sharing of their beautiful garden. The Captain and Mrs. E. M. Williams Perpetual Trophy has been awarded annually at the GCV Rose Show to the blue ribbon winner in Section VII, Class 76 (one hybrid tea, any color, and its parents) - a class that had been the brainchild of Captain Williams while serving on the GCV Rose Test Chairman’s Committee. A small silver replica of the bowl was presented to Captain and Mrs. Williams with the hope that they would bring one of their prize-winning arrangements in it from time to time.

    Rivanna’s work on the grounds at Ash Lawn --- President James Monroe’s “cabin castle” - began in the late 1970s, led by Joan Edwards, with the replacement of an old wellhead with one designed by historical architect Don Swofford, the planting of an adjacent small herb garden with brick pathways, and the refurbishing of the overseer’s cottage as a garden house where herbs and flowers could be dried. Club members did extensive research on the herbs and useful flowers grown during Monroe’s time, there being no record of the original garden design and plantings. We planted herbs, laid bricks, made ceramic plant markers, and dried the herbs to make sachet for sale in the Ash Lawn gift shop. A Rivanna committee led by Joan Edwards, Thelma Barnes, Patsy Hunt and Mary Burgh, tended the herb garden until 1988, when the project was turned over to Ash Lawn. The committee also decorated the Ash Lawn outbuildings at Christmas with greenery appropriate to the time period.

    GCV took on yet another landscaping project at the University in the late 1970s. As its contribution to a restoration of the Rotunda, GCV provided landscaping on the University Avenue side, including an enlarged brick terrace, herringbone brick walkways replacing the old concrete ones, teak garden benches and new dwarf holly hedges and white azaleas. Our member Mary Hall Betts, who had worked with her husband in GCV’s restoration of the East and West Lawn pavilion gardens, took special interest in the project. Following her husband’s death, she had served as University hostess at the Rotunda from 1959-1976, becoming fondly known as “Mama Rotunda,” and winning the University’s Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award. From the Rotunda, Mary Hall ran the student guide service that led evening tours of the University during Garden Week. She was also a gifted artist. Working with the Peter Maverick engraving and her own collection of University prints, she developed several brochures and booklets, all hand- lettered and illustrated, detailing the Lawn’s history and ground plans.

    In the late 1970s, the club decided that monthly meeting announcements could be xeroxed rather than handwritten. As noted earlier, it was also during this decade that married members began to be referred to in the minutes and yearbook by their first names - not without reservation on the part of some older members.

    Our dues followed the inflation trend of the times, increasing from $10 to $15 and then $25 during the 1970s.

    The 1980s: Achievements and Honors

    The year 1980 was a special one for Rivanna: our own Jean Printz was elected GCV President. Jean’s many talents and contributions to GCV are reflected in her service on no fewer than eight GCV committees at once (see Appendix C). Betsy Tremain’s poetic tribute to Jean in the GCV Journal concluded:

    The Garden Club of Virginia has long been her love Having held numerous posts, she now reigns from above Let us stop this ongoing list of talents we could drop Wishing joy to our cream that rose to the top The Rivanna Garden Club proudly toasts your new queen And fondly sends a flower to our own Printz Jean!

    It was also in 1980 that the GCV Common Wealth Award was inaugurated, to be given annually to a project sponsored by a club or committee in the fields of beautification, conservation, education, horticulture or preservation, the winner to be decided by a vote from each club. Rivanna was to win this award three times in the next 30 years.

    In 1981, Rivanna incorporated and extensively revised its bylaws before applying to the IRS for a ruling as to our charitable tax-exempt status, which we received in January, 1982. Over the years since, we have been able to assist a number of other GCV clubs through this laborious process.

    We reached our 60th anniversary in 1982, but a visit from an English gardening group that year put Rivanna’s anniversary in Old World perspective. According to a Daily Progress article, we were visited by a delegation from the Worshipful Company of Gardeners of London, England, which had just celebrated its 375th anniversary. The group’s special mission was to celebrate “The Year of the Tradescants.” The Tradescants were a family of English botanists said to have changed horticultural history in England by importing plant material from different parts of the world, including Virginia, where John Tradescant formed a friendship with Captain John Smith and took hundreds of Virginia plant specimens back to England. While in Charlottesville, the group was entertained by Rivanna members Ann Hereford at Carr’s Hill and Jean Printz at her home, Wilton. Jean and Dawn Woltz both remained in touch with the group over many years. In honor of this group, Jean established the Worshipful Company of Gardeners of London daffodil prize which is still awarded annually at The Garden Club of Virginia Daffodil Show. Dawn recalls that a member confided to her that on one trip, he managed to get Dawn’s ‘Dee Runk’ boxwood cuttings through British customs by wrapping them in his pajamas.

    The Ash Lawn herb garden continued to be Rivanna’s main horticultural focus and challenge. One report briefly summed up the challenge:

    “The appetite of the peacocks, combined with the attempts to use plant material known before 1810, imposed limitations.”

    In May, 1985, we hosted the GCV Annual Meeting at the Boar’s Head Inn. Murr Wieboldt made beautifully designed canvas bags for over a hundred attendees. Activities were Jefferson - themed: luncheon in the Rotunda Dome Room, a tour of the restored Pavilion gardens, and a reception at Monticello. Carolyn Wilcox negotiated the rare evening opening of Monticello and arranged for a performance by Jefferson descendant Rob Coles, who circulated at the reception in period costume.

    During these years, we helped landscape a new Red Cross building. We delivered hospital flowers on a regular basis, hosted a novice gardening class, instituted a Plant a Tree Project for the downtown mall, added substantially to our library collection, and planted a small rose and herb garden at City Hall - the Captain and Mrs. Edgar Williams Rose Garden. We held a wreath workshop for the Girls and Boys Attention Home. We operated a booth at Barracks Road Bazaar in addition to holding our own Christmas Bazaar and two plant sales in order to finance gifts to our regular projects, Attention Homes, High Rise for the Elderly, Comyn Hall and Nature Camp Scholarships, as well as to the Nature Conservancy, Blandy Farm, Ivy Creek Natural Area, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and the Wildlife Center of Virginia. We decorated a house for the Junior League Holiday House Tour. We collected vegetable seeds to be sent to Peru to help with famine relief.

    Working with the Albemarle and Charlottesville Garden Clubs, we established the ARC Natural History Day Camp - a two-week nature camp for 9 to 11 year olds at

    Panorama Farm.

    The three clubs pooled resources of $4,500 for a Wildlife Center van (quickly dubbed, at Sally Nelson’s suggestion, THE ARC, and bearing that license plate), specially outfitted to transport the animals, audiovisual equipment and publications used in the Center’s education programs.

    In 1987, we were thrilled to win the Common Wealth Award, having been a finalist in 1984 and again in 1985. Our proposal was to replace some of the huge trees at Miller School, some 150 to 200 years old, that were destroyed in a 1983 tornado. With the help of the $5,000 prize we were able to plant more than 30 trees, selected to expand the concept of an arboretum on the school’s campus - the only arboretum in Central Virginia - by adding to a nucleus of rare specimen trees. Jean Printz and Dawn Woltz led the way on this project. A Rivanna committee has continued work at Miller School over the years since, identifying trees and contributing funds for tree replacement and plaques.

    In that same year, 1987, Dawn Woltz received the Massie Medal “for her gift of beauty and her joy in the giving.” A graduate of the California School of Gardening and a horticultural expert, Dawn had started the first and only Iris Test Garden in 1957. She had served as GCV Flower Show Chairman, Horticulture Chairman and Director-at- Large. Her work at Monticello, where for 14 years she experimented with plants and arranged flowers, was legendary. An article in the August 10, 1975 Daily Progress described it as follows:

    In the spirit of Jefferson’s interest in horticulture, Mrs. Charles Woltz and Randolph Crawford, the Monticello gardener, experiment with new types of plants while continuing to grow plants that were familiar to Jefferson. Mrs. Woltz uses the numerous varieties of flowers from the garden in her arrangements for the house. Her floral arrangements appear in five of the main floor rooms and are designed to complement the mood and colors of the house...The life span of the flowers is shortened by having two to three thousand summer tourists pass by the flowers daily, often touching them to test their authenticity. The flowers require watering four or five times a day and must be replaced every other day. Mrs. Woltz enjoys experimenting with wildflowers and greenery in her arrangements. ‘Mr. Jefferson was such a fine horticulturalist that anything new we find, we use,’ Mrs. Woltz said. ‘Jefferson would have done it that way,’ she added.

    Dawn recalls a regular routine in which she arrived at Monticello at 6:00 a.m., greeted by a doorman, and worked until 9:00 a.m., making nine large arrangements. The gardeners had cut and conditioned exactly the flowers she requested the night before. On one occasion, just after arriving, she was startled when the front entrance hall was suddenly filled with music - the sound of a man’s voice humming. The doorman looked in, terrified. The two of them searched the house but could find no one. The mystery of Monticello’s singing ghost remains unsolved.

    As noted above, Dawn had published The Flowers Grown and Shown at Monticello in 1977 and led the Common Wealth Award-winning Miller School project from 1984-1987. At her own Charlottesville home, she and her husband worked over many years to build a remarkable seven-level garden on their two-acre property that was later featured in a 2002 issue of Country Gardens.

    The lives and concerns of garden club members in the 1980s reflected the changing times. At a Tri-Club luncheon in 1988, Ellen Godwin reminded the members that “young women today are homemakers, often have careers, rarely have maids, involve themselves in their deep concerns for community and environmental issues, and we must keep this much in mind as we fit our club, its activities and its members into the present day world.”

    Environmental issues were foremost among these concerns. In the late 1980s, under the leadership of Bessie Carter, GCV compiled an impressive record in helping bring about passage of major environmental legislation, including establishment of a Commission on Population and Development; prohibition of oil drilling in Chesapeake Bay; mandating of development of regional solid waste management plans designed to increase recycling dramatically; a tax on the sale of new tires, revenues to be directed toward the disposal of used tires; a price preference for recycled paper; and the establishment of a Virginia Resource Authority with a budget of $400 million. Rivanna members also participated in local recycling projects, including area waste management and recycling at the University.

    The 1990s: More Honors as We Reach 75

    Jean Printz began the decade with accolades yet again, winning the Massie Medal in 1991 for her “loving and distinguished service to the community and The Garden Club of Virginia.” She was described at the awards presentation as “having done it all!” - and indeed she had. Besides serving eight terms on the GCV Board, including one as president, and on what must be a record number of GCV committees, Jean had figured prominently in every Rivanna activity since joining the club in 1959: club president, lily test chairman “forever,” rose test chairman for 10 years, lilac test chairman (our lilac test collection bears her name); winner of countless ribbons and awards in both horticultural and artistic classes, twice winner of the Louise Keister Cochran Rose Bowl; and leader in garden restoration and preservation, notably at Miller School, where she helped us win the 1987 Common Wealth Award. The Massie Medal citation said:

    She began her first gardening at the age of three or four, and she is still hard at it. Her own gardens, always a joy to behold, have been lovingly planned and carefully tended, and she works untiringly helping to establish, to restore and to preserve the gardens of others, both private and public ones.

    Besides all her other talents and contributions, Jean had been for many years a legendary hostess, entertaining GCV groups at her home, Wilton, where she served what a GCV visitor praised as “sumptuous feasts” that - reflecting her 14 years living in the Caribbean - “always have that wonderful Cuban touch.”

    We celebrated anniversaries twice in this decade, our 70th in 1992 with a gala birthday luncheon and skit, and our 75th in 1997 with a festive celebration at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Jordan on Monticello Mountain, after a garden tour of Monticello. The Monticello party was complete with Roaring Twenties vintage attire and exquisite arrangements and menu. Sally Nelson recalls “ooga-ing” up the hill to the party with her husband and the Erns in Ernie Ern’s antique car. The car made quite a splash but would not start at the end of the evening, and the two couples had to hitch a ride home. (The car started immediately the next day, apparently pleased to have spent the night at Monticello.)

    During these years we became increasingly involved in conservation projects. We joined with the Albemarle and Charlottesville clubs to create a brochure about environmental concerns, to be distributed during Garden Week. We encouraged the use of environmentally sound gardening practices in our home gardens and lawns, such as using compost, reducing lawn surface areas and using non-toxic insecticides. We began a Home and Garden Recycle-Reuse Contest for the member submitting the greatest number of recycle-reuse ideas (the first winner was Fran Boninti, who received as a prize The Environmental Gardener). We contributed toward environmental educational programs developed by the Wildlife Center of Virginia. We made a contribution toward the purchase of 225 acres of rainforest for the Organization of Tropical Studies at La Selva, Costa Rica. Local environmental issues included the Charlottesville-Albemarle landfill and the Route 29 bypass.

    GCV celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1995 with a black tie dinner and dance at the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond. The following year, we joined the Albemarle and Charlottesville Clubs to celebrate GCV’s 75th by planting a sourwood tree at Ivy Creek Natural Area. The three clubs also joined in a gift towards the construction of a year- round educational building at Ivy Creek.

    Other community projects in these years included landscaping and a new sign at the Westhaven housing project, gifts to girls and boys at the Community Attention Home, wreath workshops for the Boys and Girls Club and High Rise for the Elderly, and wreaths for the Ronald McDonald House and Westhaven. Funds we contributed for landscaping enabled the new Ronald McDonald House to obtain an occupancy permit and open its doors.

    A GCV Lily Show Rivanna hosted at Alumni Hall in 1996 called for ingenuity in staging, recalls Carolyn Wilcox. Alumni Hall had recently been refurbished with new wallpaper featuring a bold red floral pattern. Worried that the lilies would be overwhelmed, Carolyn and Celia Ochs, the Chairmen, moved 50 pedestals to the middle of the room, distances having been carefully measured by Murr Wieboldt. The lilies, resplendent in Fleischmann’s Gin bottles, were displayed to excellent effect.

    Fittingly, it was in 1997, as we marked our 75th anniversary, that we won our second Common Wealth Award, this time for our proposal to landscape the new Ivy Creek Education Building, located on the 215-acre Ivy Creek Natural Area near Charlottesville. Plans called for trees and shrubs to be chosen for aesthetic and historic appeal as well as fall foliage, seasonal bloom and benefit to wildlife. The project was delayed by drought, but on a misty morning in November, 1998, our member Fran Boninti and 27 other Master Gardeners planted more than 130 native trees and shrubs, chosen to shade the building in summer and allow the sun to shine through in winter, and to provide a protected area for birds and small mammals, as well as a demonstration garden. Through Fran’s efforts, much of the plant material and labor was donated, leaving enough funds to build a low fieldstone wall along the front of the building for an outdoor classroom and to purchase educational tools and equipment.

    As our 75th anniversary gift to the community that year, we pledged $5,000 to the Thomas Jefferson Parkway’s children’s garden, part of an 89-acre park at the foot of the new parkway and walking trail to Monticello.

    In 1999 the Elizabeth Cabell Dugdale Award for Achievement in Conservation (awarded to an organization, industry, or an individual who is not a GCV member for outstanding work in conservation) was given, on Rivanna’s nomination, to the University of Virginia Foundation for a tree transplanting project at the Research Park at North Fork that saved 3,000 trees, some as tall as 60 feet, from being bulldozed, then relocated them along the park’s main drive. The Foundation’s plan also called for planting additional native trees, shrubs and wildflowers and for minimizing grass planting in order to limit fertilizing and watering.

    The New Millennium Years: 2000-2012

    We began this decade with another award winner, when Fran Boninti received the DeLacy Gray Medal for Conservation in 2001. Fran was cited for teaching young and old to identify, safeguard and propagate native plants; landscaping the Ivy Creek Education Building (she not only led the Master Gardener planting team but persuaded 16 nurseries to donate trees, shrubs and plants); spearheading development of the Holkham Hollow Natural Area; and heading the building of a butterfly garden and bluebird trail for the Meriwether Lewis Elementary School. The GCV Journal said: “The Garden Club of Virginia is fortunate to have Fran’s generous vitality, her breadth of knowledge and her deep-rooted commitment to Virginia’s native environment as a resource, as well as a treasure.”

    Although we were well practiced at anniversary bashes by the time we reached our 80th in 2002, our celebration that year was spectacular by any measure - a black tie dinner dance hosted by Betty Scripps under the tent at her home, “Eagle Hill,” with exquisite floral decorations and a beautiful view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

    Technologically, we moved into the 21st century during these years by recording minutes of meetings on a laptop and emailing newsletters and notices to members. We were all connected! The GCV website was updated and enhanced. In 2010, we launched our own website.

    As always, flower shows presented both challenges and room for creativity. Three members recall the following adventure:

    Lucy’s Lily (or Anyone Can Win)

    While collecting flowers for our 2002 Chatham Lily Show arrangement, Sue McNeely and Louise Tayloe picked a beautiful white lily from Lucy Morris’s garden. The lily sat quietly at the edge of the table while the committee worked on the arrangement, and was not used. But it was so striking that Louise, Lynn Morris and Betty Blackburn placed it in the “in case” bucket and took it to Chatham ona very hot day in June. It was left in the closed car while the arrangement was taken inside and entered in the show. The lily was still so pretty that the girls eventually took it into the workroom to share should others need it for their arrangement. Later, Louise and Lynn noticed that no one had used Lucy’s lily and it was in a discard bucket. In an unusual moment of brilliant thinking, they thought out loud to each other that perhaps they should put it in the horticulture part of the show. (The reader needs to know that neither Louise nor Lynn had ever participated in anything relating to horticulture.) They yanked the lily out of its bucket and toured the horticulture tables looking for a similar looking lily so they would know what kind it was. They had ten minutes to get it in place and entered. Louise sent Lynn to find how to display a specimen and she took off to register the lily. Sarah Belle Parrot showed them how to clean the pollen, and voila! It was part of the Chatham Lily Show, with seconds to spare! Louise, Lynn and Betty went to lunch laughing about their lark and jokingly asked a member of Augusta to pick up the silver bowl should the lily win - WHICH IT DID! Louise did not know Lucy’s address, so she entered the lily with Lynn’s address. Not only did Lynn and Louise have to go to Staunton to pick up the Blanche Rohrer Davis Memorial Bowl for Lucy, but Lynn got credit! Lucy is being given belated credit for the lily. And the moral of the story is ANYONE can win!!

    During these years we gave funds to create and install a garden gate at the historic C. B. Holt Rock House on Preston Avenue (part of the Legal Aid Justice Center) and contributed to landscaping there. We joined the Albemarle and Charlottesville clubs in planting a sugar maple tree at the entrance to the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport honoring the victims of the September 11, 2001 disaster, and in decorating the Amtrak station annually for the holidays. We made gifts to the Alternative School Mothers Day project and the Attention Home, helped fund the McGuffey Park project, and provided table decorations for Blue Ridge House. We gave funds for two balusters for the Kent- Valentine House.

    After hearing Nancy Newman’s program on “The State of Our Rivers,” in which she described the ecology of the Rivanna River, the club was moved to focus on conservation and education relating to our namesake river. In the following years, we funded water monitoring kits and river sojourn scholarships sponsored by the Rivanna Conservation Society and planted trees on the banks of the river.

    In 2006, it was again Rivanna’s turn to host the GCV annual meeting to which we issued the following invitation, penned by Lynn Morris:

    We’ve put together our bag of tricks
    To entice you to Charlottesville in 2006
    May 9-11 are the dates to recall
    For an exciting stay on our Historic (Downtown) Mall Tuesday night be casual and eat barbecue Wednesday,
    we’ll see Tufton and Monticello, too! We’ll lunch at Redlands with Bessie Carter

    And all of this - just for a starter

    Jan Stalfort and Nancy Lowry headed this herculean effort with aplomb. Mary Howard hosted a luncheon for the GCV Board. As promised in the invitation, entertainment ranged from “denim casual” barbeque at the Ice Park to an elegant luncheon at Redlands with a lecture by Peggy Cornett, a tour of Monticello, and wine and cheese with Lou and Dan Jordan at Montalto. We offered optional tours to the Washington Park Bog Garden, University Pavilions, Tufton, Ivy Creek and the Morea Arboretum.

    In 2007, on Rivanna’s nomination, The Union Bank and Trust received GCV’s Elizabeth Cabell Dugdale Award for Conservation. When Union Bank purchased its Barracks Road branch site, it received authorization to fill in a stream that runs through the property and build a parking lot. The bank chose instead to preserve the stream, which required repositioning of the building, loss of some parking space, and construction of a bridge over the stream. Measures were also taken to reduce light pollution at the site, install a biofilter to protect the stream from pollutants, and landscape the site with a variety of native plants. Fran Boninti worked hard to gather information and bring the bank’s conservation efforts to the attention of the GCV Conservation Committee.

    Conservation continued to be a focus of attention at our meetings, too, with regular reports on topics such as mountaintop removal, the dangers of plastic bags, and the use of fluorescent compact light bulbs, reusable water bottles and rain barrels.

    We undertook a major corporate “housecleaning” in 2007-2008, updating and streamlining our articles of incorporation and bylaws and adding new categories of membership. At the same time, we wrote new standing rules and membership proposal guidelines, and reorganized the yearbook with a focus on ease of use and clarity. Rivanna’s yearbook was made accessible on the GCV website, and members were given the option to receive an electronic or hard copy.

    In 2008, led by Lucy Huff and Louise Tayloe, and with help from the Albemarle and Charlottesville clubs, Rivanna spearheaded two significant changes in GCV’s structure and operations. First, six GCV districts were created, similar to the Historic Garden Week districts that had existed for many years but more balanced: lines were drawn so that each district would have around 600 members. Each district would be represented by an at-large GCV board member responsible for keeping track of issues and concerns within the district and reporting them to the Board. Second, the Annual Meeting and Board of Governors meetings were consolidated and shortened from three days to one and a half days beginning in 2009. This change, prompted by GCV President Cabell West’s challenge to be mindful of the economic times, has resulted in tremendous savings in meeting costs to both GCV and member clubs, allowing funds to be redirected to restoration and conservation. Louise Tayloe was elected the new District II GCV director-at-large at that meeting.

    Rivanna honored Jean Printz in 2008, when she celebrated both her 90th birthday and 50 years of membership in Rivanna, by establishing the Mary Jean Printz Perpetual Rose Award for Interclub Horticulture, Section III, Class 30.

    We began our 90th year in spectacular fashion, winning the Common Wealth Award for the third time in the fall of 2011 for our proposal to provide landscaping at both the Albemarle and Buckingham County landings of the Hatton Ferry, the country’s last operating hand-poled ferry, which crosses the James River near Scottsville. The ferry had lost its funding from the Virginia Department of Transportation in 2009 and was taken over by the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society. Our proposal sought funds not only to beautify the site and provide picnic tables and signage, but to stabilize the river banks. We noted the rich historic significance of the area, which has been home to Monacan Indians, settlers moving west, Union troops sent to destroy the Kanawha Canal, and early commercial endeavors incorporating river, road, canal and railroad transportation. Two Rivanna members shared special credit for the award: Louise Tayloe, a weekly volunteer at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Historical Society, who located and organized all the information about the Ferry and its site and put together the final proposal, and Stuart Dopp, who wrote the text of the proposal and the concise but information-packed version that was read at every GCV garden club’s September meeting.

    *********

    As this history goes to press, Rivanna members, armed with trowels, are quite literally breaking ground at Hatton Ferry to plant the riverbanks for erosion control. We are receiving regular reports from our Conservation Committee on whether Virginia’s moratorium on uranium mining should be lifted in the face of concerns about environmental damage, long term costs and radioactive contamination - an issue being closely tracked by GCV. We have adopted a bio filter (rainwater retention basin) in Claudius Crozet Park, which we designed, planted and will maintain for three years. We recently participated in Rivanna Conservation Day, helping plant 3,000 trees as part of a riverbank project. We continue to work to limit plastic bottles and bags and billboard advertising. We are helping fund a habitat at Venable School, a shed at the City Schoolyard Garden at Buford School, and a greenhouse at the Henry Avenue Alternative School. We have funded water monitoring kits; tools and seeds for gardens through the International Rescue Committee; restoration of gardens at the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society; landscaping at the Shelter for Help in Emergency; and tree replacement and plaques at the Miller School Arboretum. We are saving time and paper as we familiarize ourselves with the club’s improved website. We continue with flower arranging workshops, plant sales and GCV flower shows, and worry whether, after a hot spell in March, there will be daffodils for the Daffodil Show or azaleas for Garden Week. As we work on the celebration to be held at Morven in June, we believe our past members over the years since 1922 would be fascinated and delighted at what their club is doing in 2012.

    With the next decade in mind as we now head toward our centennial in 2022, we who have put together this small booklet echo the appeal of Mrs. William Murphy, club historian, at the May, 1941 meeting, that members contribute their papers and recollections to our continuing history:

    My quest of things that one might keep Has scratched the surface - but not deep I’ve gathered some things - of a sort But not enough for a report

    So everyone, go look and see. If you can find some things for me; old records, year books, papers read, Old scrap book poems, wise things said.. So that the future members too may know the things we used to do.

    A - Presidents of The Rivanna Garden Club, 1922-2012
    B - The Rivanna Garden Club Membership Roster, 1922 to 2012
    C - Members of The Rivanna Garden Club Who Have Held Office in The Garden Club of Virginia
    D - The Garden Club of Virginia Awards Won by The Rivanna Garden Club
    E - The Garden Club of Virginia Meetings and
    Flower Shows Hosted by The Rivanna Garden Club
    F - The Rivanna Garden Club Projectes Listed by Decade

    APPENDICES

     

    APPENDIX A

    Presidents of The Rivanna Garden Club, 1922-2012

     

    *Mrs. Thomas Fawcus *Mrs. Richmond Minor *Mrs. William F. Long *Mrs. Samuel A. Mitchell *Mrs. Harry L. Smith, Sr. *Mrs. William J. Phillips *Mrs. J. Sharshall Grasty *Mrs. Delos B. Kidder *Mrs. Harry L. Smith, Sr. *Mrs. Harry Clemons *Mrs. William R. Smithey *Mrs. George B. Zehmer *Mrs. Robert S. Burgess *Mrs. Woodruff J. Rankin *Mrs. John L. Manahan *Mrs. Edwin M. Betts *Mrs. Harry L. Smith, Jr. *Mrs. Austin D. Kilham *Mrs. Edgar M. Williams *Mrs. Emerson G. Spies *Mrs. Alfred Burger
    1922-1923 1923-1924 1924-1926 1926-1928 1928-1930 1930-1932 1932-1934 1934-1936 1936-1938 1938-1940 1940-1942 1942-1944 1944-1946 1946-1948 1948-1950 1950-1952 1952-1954 1954-1956 1956-1958 1958-1960 1960-1962 1962-1964 1964-1966
    Miss Jean Printz
    *Mrs. Richard H. Henneman *Mrs. Myron E. Tremain
    1966-1968 1968-1970 1970-1972 1972-1974 1974-1976 1976-1978 1978-1980 1980-1982 1982-1984 1984-1986 1986-1988 1988-1990 1990-1992 1992-1994 1994-1996 1996-1998 1998-2000 2000-2002 2002-2004 2004-2006 2006-2008 2008-2010 2010-2012
    Mrs. Charles K. Woltz *Mrs. Ernest J. Oglesby
    Mrs. Thomas N. Connors Mrs. John C. Lowry
    Mrs. John A. Stalfort II Mrs. Edward D. Tayloe II Mrs. Robert M. Huff Mrs. Richard E. Carter

    *Deceased

    Mrs. Elmer F. Wieboldt, Jr. *Mrs. Carl McFarland
    Mrs. David V. Strider
    *Mrs. Charles M. Davison, Jr.
    Mrs. Stanley P. Wilcox Mrs. Richard L. Nunley Mrs. William S. Edwards Mrs. Bruce W. Nelson Mrs. Ernest H. Ern
    *Mrs. Martin Ochs
    Mrs. James B. Wood Mrs. A. Ward Sims
    Mrs. Eugene L. Kerewich Mrs. Guy F. Miller

     

    APPENDIX B

    The Rivanna Garden Club Membership Roster 1922 To 2012

    Andrews, Elizabeth (Mrs. Malcolm) ‘10 Atuk, Jean (Mrs. Nuzhet O.) ‘75 Austin, Ginny (Mrs. Harry P. Jr.) ‘66 Baker, Louisa (Mrs. Charles) ‘35 *Balthis, Lily Lauve
    Brooks, Nancy (Mrs. Peter) ‘08 Brown, Gertrude (Mrs. Percy) ‘27 Bryant, Margueritte (Mrs. M. Howard) ’69 Buck, Laura (Mrs. Richard) ‘23 Burger, Frances (Mrs. Alfred) ‘53 Burgess, Edna (Mrs. Robert S.) ‘40 Campbell, Jennie (Mrs. Allan) ‘03 Carter, Janice (Mrs. Richard E.) ‘06 Carter, Laura (Mrs. Bruce T.)
    (Mrs. Randolph Miller) ‘22 *Balz, Dorothy (Mrs. Albert G.) ‘22 Barnes, Nina (Mrs. Dennis W.) ‘79 Barnes, Thelma (Mrs. John Potts) ‘62 Barr, Anna (Mrs. James K.) ‘35 Bass, Sophia (Mrs. Thomas E. III) ‘91 Beams, Maxine (Mrs. Jesse W.) ‘41 Bean, Adelaide (Mrs. Robert Bennett) ’23 Beirne, Rhoda (Mrs. Lewis Caperton) ‘28 Benner, Bev (Mrs. Harry Jr.) ‘96 Bentley, Mary (Mrs. Timothy J. Jr.) ‘78 Bethke, Hedley (Mrs. Robert) ‘99 Betts, Mary Hall (Mrs. Edwin M.) ‘41 **Betts, Dr. Edwin M. ‘49 *Bird, Caroline
    (formerly Mrs. Laura E. Peters) ‘00 Carter, Liz (Mrs. Andrew B.) ‘08 Chapin, Didi (Mrs. Peter) ‘03 Chaplin, Dody (Mrs. John G.) ‘00 Chase, Margery (Mrs. Samuel P. Jr.) ‘83 *Cheape, Malvina (Mrs. J. Albert) ‘22 Chisholm, Meta (Mrs. William H.) ‘83 *Chisholm, Grace (Mrs. J. A.) ‘22 Clemons, Jeannie (Mrs. Harry) ‘29 Clover, Mary (Mrs. Williston)
    (Mrs. Robert Montgomery) ‘22 Birdsong, Charlotte (Mrs. McLemore) ’50 Blackburn, Betty (Mrs. John A.) ‘94 Blue, Virginia (Miss) ‘23 **Blue, Augusta (Mrs. Charles E.) ‘22 Boninti, Fran (Mrs. Andrew F.) ‘91 Bradbury, Cheryl (Mrs. Thomas E.) ‘08 Bradley, Margaret (Mrs. Edgar L. Jr.) ’30 *Brady, Isabel (Mrs. W. S.) ‘22 Bromwell, Betty (Mrs. W. Wade)
    Sessions, Mrs. Stuart F. Burgh) ’79 Cochran, Louise (Mrs. Keister)
    (formerly Mrs. H. LeRoss Browne) ‘75
    (formerly Mrs. Joel M. Cochran) ‘58 Cocke, Louise (Miss) ‘27 Connors, Jocelyn (Mrs. Thomas N.) ‘97 Cooper, Juliet (Mrs. George) ‘50 Corbett, Nannie (Mrs. H. Guy) ‘23 Cox, Kara (Mrs. James P .) ‘06 Crawford, Ruth (Mrs. Victor) ‘52 Cunningham, Maude (Mrs. Henry) ‘32 Cunningham, Helen (Miss) ‘33 Dabney, Lillian (Mrs. Archibald D.) ‘23 Dabney, Lily (Mrs. Richard Heath) ‘23 Dance, Dorothy (Mrs. Stuart Lee Jr.) ‘64 Daniel, Katharine (Mrs. Channing W.) ’50 Daniel, Margery (Mrs. Thomas M.) ‘86 Daniel, Nancy (Mrs.) ‘07 **Darden, Connie (Mrs. Colgate) ‘47 **Davis, Volumnia (Mrs. John Staige) ’22 Davison, Alida (Mrs. Charles M. Jr.) ‘65 **Davison, Mr. Charles M. Jr. ‘87 Delaney, Margaret (Mrs. Ward) ‘50 Delany, Melene (Mrs. A. Graham) ‘78 Dickey, Heather (Mrs. William) ‘99 Dillard, Carra (Mrs. George) ‘36 Donovan, Marion (Mrs. Herbert A.) ‘40 Dopp, Stuart (Mrs. Daniel L.) ‘02 Drapanas, Thierry (Mrs. Mark) ‘10 Dryden, Helen (Mrs. Lester) ‘43 Duvall, Esten (Miss) ‘23 Eades, Mary (Mrs. Peter G.) ‘99 Echols, Estelle (Mrs. Ernest V.) ‘78 Edwards, Joan (Mrs. William S.) ‘78 Ern, Petie (Mrs. Ernest H.) ‘81 Faulkner, Sylvia (Mrs. W. H.) ‘23 *Fawcus, Lucille (Mrs. Thomas) ‘22 Ferguson, Belle (Mrs. George O.) ‘23 Fernald, Betsy (Mrs. James A. III) ‘02 Fitz-Hugh, Orie (Mrs. Glassell) ‘25 Fitz-Hugh, Dorothea Goings, Brenda (Mrs.) ‘81 Gordon, Miriam (Mrs. M. B.) ‘39 Gordon, Cornelia (Mrs. G. Slaughter) ’60 Galban, Ev (Mrs. Julio S.) ‘32 Gallagher, Eileen Anne (Mrs. Gary W.) ’01 Geldard, Jeanette (Mrs. Frank A.) ‘33 Gibson, Harriet (Mrs. Robert Fisher) ‘26 Gibson, Peggy (Mrs. David J.) ‘62 (Mrs. Frank L. Sr.) ‘62 Heyward, Haidee (Mrs. John T.) ‘40 *Higginson, Helen (Mrs. J. M.) ‘22 *Hildreth, Lila (Mrs. Eugene A.) ‘22 Hitchcock, Caroline (Miss) ‘23 Hitchcock, Margaret (Miss) ‘28 Hitchcock, Mary (Mrs. John) ‘23 Horsley, Mary (Mrs. J. Shelton III) ‘75 Howard, Emily (Mrs. Albert F.) ‘26 Howard, Mary (Mrs. A. E. Dick) ‘96 Huff, Lucy (Mrs. Robert M.) ‘93 (Mrs. Armistead C. Jr.) ‘27 Gouldman, Sue (Mrs. W. Clyde II) ‘03 Grasty, Lucy (Mrs. Thomas P.) ‘40 Grasty, Hilton (Mrs. Thomas Pettus) ‘55 *Grasty, Elizabeth (Mrs. J. Sharshall) ‘22 Graves, Martha (Mrs. John S.) ‘25 Grey, Margaret (Mrs. John H. Jr.) ‘48 Griffin, Eunice (Mrs. James T.) ‘69 Grinnell, Blanca (Mrs. Thomas D.) ‘37 Hale, Virginia (Mrs. Oron J.) (formerly Mrs. George B. Zehmer) ’76 Hamer, Margaret (Mrs. David) ‘09 Hamer, Lynn (Mrs. Frederick C. Jr.) ‘81 Hammond, Frances (Mrs. Lewis M.) ‘56 Hancock, Laura (Mrs. R. R.) ‘35 Hancock, Belle (Mrs. Harris) ‘41 Harrison, Kate (Mrs. Carter) ‘23 Henderson, Dana (Mrs. William) ‘12 Henneman, Betty (Mrs. Richard H.) ‘50 Hereford, Ann (Mrs. Frank L. Jr.) ‘51 Hereford, Marguerite Huffard, Nora (Mrs. John B.) ‘36 Humphries, Zaida Manahan, Lucile (Mrs. John L.) ‘25 Marshall, Evelyn (Mrs. Virgil H.) ‘69 McCoid, Bev (Mrs. John C.) ‘73 McFarland, Pat (Mrs. Carl) ‘62 *McMurdo, Lilian (Mrs. Aston) ‘22 *McMurdo, Maryanne (Mrs. Marion K. Jr.) ‘67 Hunt, Patsy (Mrs. William B.) (formerly Ms. Martha I. Kitchen, Mrs. James D. Kitchin III) ‘83 Husted, Kathryn (Mrs. Ladley) ‘50 Irving, Elizabeth (Mrs. Charles R.) ‘36 *Janvier, Sarah (Mrs. Sarah Minor) ‘22 Jennings, Michelle (Mrs. Joseph III) ‘06 Johnston, Martha (Mrs. Whittle) ‘72 Jordan, Ilda (Mrs. Harvey E.) ‘30 Jordan, Lou (Mrs. Daniel P.) ‘86 Kayan, Betty (Mrs. Elizabeth R.) ‘39 Kayan, Ann (Mrs. John B.) ‘74 Keister, Dot (Mrs. Thomas C.) ‘50 Keller, Lois (Mrs. William G.) ‘82 Kelsey, Lucille (Mrs. Norman) ‘35 Kerewich, Jane (Mrs. Eugene L.) ‘93 Kidder, Mary (Mrs. Delos B.) 1 ‘29 Kilham, Susie (Mrs. Austin D.) ‘38 **Kilham, Mr. Austin D. ‘66 King, Georgina (Ms.) (Ralph E. Main)

    (Mrs. Robert M.) ‘22 McMurry, Theo (Mrs. Morland J.) ‘65 McNeely, Mamie (Mrs. Wilson) ‘57 McNeely, Sue (Mrs. Prentice J.) ‘88 McV eigh, Katharine (formerly Mrs. Patrick D. King) ‘03 Lange, Janet (Mrs. Donald E.) ‘68 LaTourette, Lorene (Ms.)
    (Mrs. Oscar Lee Jr.) ’75 *Minor, Mary (Mrs. Richmond) ‘22 *Mitchell, Milly (Mrs. Samuel Alfred) ‘22 Moga, Daisy (Mrs. David B.) ‘94 Molyneaux, Irene (Mrs. Lambert) ‘55 Moran, Katherine (Mrs. Charles) ‘23 Morgan, Elizabeth (Mrs. Richard C.) ‘86 Morin, Barbara (Mrs. Bernard A.) ‘87 Morris, Kathie (Mrs. David L.) ‘02 Morris, Lynn (Mrs. John R. III) ‘89 Morris, Lucy (Mrs. John R. Jr.) ‘59 Muller, Hillie (Mrs. William H. Jr.) ‘67 Murphy, Hazel (Mrs. William B.) ‘35 Murphy, Luanne (Mrs. Joseph J.) ‘92
    (Ivo Romenesko) ‘06 Lewis, Margaret (Mrs. Ivey F.) ‘27 Lindsay, Annie (Mrs. James H.) ‘32 Lohman, Lila (Ms.)
    (formerly Mrs. Mark R.) ’03 *Long, Ada (Mrs. William F.) ‘22 Lorber, Ginny (Mrs. J. F. Auguste III) ‘02 Lowry, Nancy (Mrs. John C.) ‘90 Magruder, Eleanor (Mrs. R. Gregory) ‘68

    (Mrs. Llewellyn W.) ’25 Meador, Jan (Mrs. Daniel J.) ’71 Michie, Haidee (Mrs. George R. B.) ‘23 Middleton, Chita
    (Mrs. Frederick F. III) ’89 Millard, Marilyn (Mrs. Roger T.) ‘06 Miller, Derry (Ms.) (Eugene J. Meyung)
    (formerly Mrs. Charles W. Miller) ‘81 Miller, Mary Ann (Mrs. Guy F.) ‘92 Miller, Mary Rose

    Musselman, Susan (Mrs. Joseph F.) ‘36 Myers, Ann (Mrs. H. Carter III) ‘96 Nash, Lydia (Mrs. Charles P.) ‘28 Nelson, Sally (Mrs. Bruce W.) ‘76 Nelson, Patsy (Mrs. Robert B.) ‘93 Nicholas, Linda (Mrs. Richard L.) ‘02 Nolting, Elisabeth Pratt, Agnes (Mrs. Harry Rogers) ‘25 Price, Pat (Mrs. Jim) ‘83 Printz, Jean (Miss Mary Jean) ‘59 Randolph, Jean (Mrs. O. Robbins) ‘37 Randolph, Anne (Mrs. Thomas (Miss Elisabeth A.) ‘53 Nowlin, Judy Jefferson V) ‘51 Rankin, Martha (Mrs. Woodruff J.) ‘44 Redfield, Anne (Mrs. H. J.) ‘50 Ripper, Phyllis (Mrs. Edward H.) ‘10 Roberts, Ann (Mrs. H. B. Jr.) ‘92 Rooker, Ann (Mrs. Dennis S.) ‘01 Rotch, Jane (Mrs. William) ‘77 Royall, Lois (Mrs. Hilary H.) ‘35 Royster, Ola (Mrs. Lawrence T.) ’26 **Runk, Prof. B. F. D. (Dee) ‘76 Rush, Lynn (Mrs. Ralph A. Jr.) ’99 Ryan, Aurelia (Mrs. Philip H.) ‘45 Sanson, Nancy (Mrs. Arthur M.) ‘80 Schmitz, Becky (Mrs. Stephen E.) ‘01 **Schuyler, Mr. Walter W. ‘69 Scripps, Betty (Ms.) (formerly Mrs.
    (Mrs. George P. III) ’11 Marshall, Alice (Mrs. David R.) ‘93 Marvin, Anna (Mrs. Charles I.) ‘34 Matheson, Andrea (Mrs. Charles)
    (formerly Mrs. Hunter Davidson) ‘03 *Maury, Belle (Mrs. John Minor) ‘22 Maxcy, Gertrude (Mrs. Kenneth) ‘34 McCleery, Anne (Miss) ‘23 Nunley, Judy (Mrs. Richard L.) ‘66 Ochs, Celia (Mrs. Martin) ‘74 O’Connell, Louise (Mrs. Joseph H.) ‘43 Oglesby, Elizabeth (Mrs. Earnest J.) ‘51 O’Neil, Karen (Mrs. Robert M.) ‘87 Owen, Ethel Christine (Mrs. L. J.) ‘32 Paige, Ora Nell (Mrs. Eugene) ‘88 Patterson, Julie (Mrs. James W.) ‘01 Patteson, Jean (Mrs. David) ‘12 Payne, Ethel (Mrs. Brooke) ‘32 Peatross, Judith (Mrs. Paul M. Jr.) ‘12 Peavey, Jo (Mrs. Marion B.) ‘84 Peirce, Dorothy (Mrs. Stanley K.) ‘48 Perriello, Linda (Mrs. Vito A.) ‘07 Phillips, Hazel (Mrs. William J.) ‘24 **Phillips, Dr. William J. ‘58 Pond, Trish (Mrs. William A.) ‘02 Post, Sara (Mrs. David M.) ‘06 Elizabeth Scripps-Harvey, Jefferson IV) ‘25 Randolph, Augusta (Mrs. Thomas Mrs. Edward W. Scripps) ‘82 Shaffer, Sallie (Mrs. Elmer) ‘23 Sims, Sallie (Mrs. A. Ward) (formerly Miss Sallie Twyman) ‘83 Sipe, Mary Ann (Mrs. William H.) ‘92 Sipe, Cameron (Mrs. Charles Y .) ‘07 Smith, Margaret (Mrs. Downing L.) ‘64 Smith, Margaret (Mrs. J. C.) ‘66 Smith, Sarah (Mrs. Harry L. Jr.) ‘43 Smith, Jessie (Mrs. Harry LeCato Sr.) ‘23 Smithey, Margaret (Mrs. William R.) ‘26 Snavely, Nell (Mrs. Tipton Ray) ‘46 Southall, Jeannie (Mrs. James) ‘30 Sparrow, Lettice (Mrs. Carroll) ‘24 Speidel, Margaret (Mrs. Carl C.) ‘37 Spies, Mary Ethel (Mrs. Emerson G.) ‘54 Staley, Oz (Mrs. John David) ‘11 Stalfort, Jan (Mrs. John A. II) ‘93 Strider, Betty (Mrs. David V.) ‘65 Stuart, Ann (Mrs. Linden) ‘51 Surber, Louise (Mrs. William H.) ‘23 Tayloe, Louise (Mrs. Edward D. II) ‘90 Taylor, Lucie (Mrs. Moncure) ‘24 Taylor, Edith (Mrs. Harrison) ‘39 Terrill, Jamie (Miss) ‘44 Tilman, Nancy (Mrs. G. McNeir) ‘96 Tilman, Meda (Mrs. J. Dean) ‘52 Todd, Pauline (Mrs. G. Carroll) ‘42 Todd, Sallie (Mrs. T. Hardy) ‘47 Tremain, Betsy (Mrs. Myron E.) ‘56 Trevillian, Patsy (Mrs. William B. Jr.) ‘74 Trevillian, Julia (Mrs. William B. Sr.) ‘62 Tufts, Susan (Ms.) ‘01 Twyman, Sallie (Mrs. Frederick W.) ‘29 Twyman, Bess (Mrs. James Baker) ‘45 Van Clief, Tammy (Mrs. J. Courtland) ‘97 Van Nostrand, Elizabeth *Weaver, Mildred (Mrs. William Dixon) ’22 (Mrs. Harold T.) ’23 Van Wagenen, Mary (Mrs. Duryee) ‘26 Walker, Mary (Mrs. George F. Jr.) ‘38 Walker, Mary (Mrs. David S.) ‘42 Watterson, Emily (Mrs. John S. Jr.) ‘71 (formerly Mrs. Stanley P. Wilcox) ‘67 Wiley, Charlotte (Mrs. Bradford K.) ‘39 Williams, Margaret (Mrs. Edgar M.) ‘49 **Williams, Capt. Edgar M. ‘58 Williams, Ronnie (Mrs. Thomas E.) ‘83 Williams, Judy (Mrs. C. Harmon) ‘98 Wilson, Julia (Mrs. James Southall) ‘33 Woltz, Dawn (Mrs. Charles K.) ‘50 **Woltz, Mr. Charles K. ‘91 Wood, Margaret (Mrs. Warner) ‘23 Wood, Margaret (Mrs. James B.) ‘86 Woodard, Betsy (Mrs. Calvin) ‘79 Woods, Lutie (Miss) ‘30 Woods, Dolly (Mrs. T. K.) ‘55 Woodward, Suan (Miss) ‘79 Woody, Dot (Mrs. T. Braxton) ‘60 Worth, Pattie (Mrs. Daniel) ‘61 Worthington, MadeleineWeldon, Betty (Mrs. William H.) ‘72 Wenck, Esther (Mrs. William A.) ‘59 Wertz, Martha (Mrs. Kenneth L.) ‘12 Wetmore, Elizabeth (Mrs. Charles W.) ‘28 Wheless, Barbara (Mrs. Mark) ‘10 White, Ida Ellie (Mrs. Landon) ‘26 Whyburn, Lucille (Mrs. Gordon) ‘42 Wieboldt, Murr (Mrs. Elmer F. Jr.) ‘61 Wilcox, Carolyn (Mrs. C. Covert)  ‘54 Wright, Judy (Mrs. Harry A. Jr.) ‘08

    *Founding Member **Honorary Member

     

    APPENDIX C

    Members of The Rivanna Garden Club Who Have Held Office in The Garden Club of Virginia Officers

    President

    1980-82 Miss Jean Printz
    1982-83 Miss Jean Printz, Immediate Past President
    Vice President
    1978-80 Miss Jean Printz
    Treasurer
    1946-50 Mrs. Robert S. Burgess 1974-78 Miss Jean Printz
    Recording Secretary
    1942-44 Mrs. Harry Clemons
    Corresponding Secretary
    1928-30 Mrs. J. Sharshall Grasty
    1934-36 Mrs. Harold T. Van Nostrand, Jr.
    Directors at Large
    1944-47 Mrs. Harry Clemons 1962-65 Mrs. Edgar M. Williams 1978-81 Mrs. Charles K. Woltz 2009-11 Mrs. Edward D. Tayloe II

    Admissions

    1982-84 Miss Jean Printz

    Common Wealth Award
    1988-2010 Miss Jean Printz 2004-06 Mrs. John C. Lowry 2006-08 *Mrs. John C. Lowry 2008-10 Mrs. John C. Lowry

    Conservation
    1953-54 Mrs. E. J. Oglesby 1990-94 Mrs. Ernest H. Ern 2002-04 Mrs. Thomas N. Connors 2010-12 Mrs. David L. Morris

    Finance
    1974-78 Mrs. Myron E. Tremain 1982-84 Miss Jean Printz 1984-86 *Miss Jean Printz 1986-90 Miss Jean Printz 1992-94 Miss Jean Printz

    Flower Shows
    1973-74 *Mrs. Charles K. Woltz 1996-2002 Mrs. M. Howard Bryant
    Historian and Custodian of Records
    1953-56 *Mrs. Harry Clemons 1956-58 *Mrs. Harry L. Smith Jr. 1958-60 *Mrs. William J. Phillips 1994-98 Miss Jean Printz 2000-02 Miss Jean Printz 2004-06 *Mrs. John C. Lowry
    Committee Chairmen and Committee Members
    Historic Garden 1959 Week - District II Chairmen *Mrs. Alfred Burger
    1974-77 1977-83 1983-89 2004-09
    *Mrs. Charles M. Davison Jr. *Mrs. Stanley L. Wilcox *Mrs. David V . Strider *Mrs. Edward D. Tayloe II
    Horticulture 1976-78
    *Mrs. Charles K. Woltz 1999-2004 Mrs. Andrew F. Boninti
    2004-06 *Mrs. Andrew F. Boninti 2004-08 Mrs. Peter G. Eades
    2008-10 *Mrs. Peter G. Eades
    2008-11 Mrs. James W. Patterson
    Investment
    2002-04 Mrs. Ernest Ern
    Judges 1928
    1928 Mrs. William F. Long
    Mrs. Harry L. Smith Sr.
    1933 Mrs. J. Sharshall Grasty 1933 Mrs. William J. Phillips 1954 *Mrs. Harry L. Smith Jr.
    Kent-Valentine House
    1982-86 Miss Jean Printz 1988-90 Miss Jean Printz
    Massie Medal Award
    1982-86 Miss Jean Printz 1990-92 Miss Jean Printz 1996-98 Miss Jean Printz 2004-08 Mrs. Andrew F. Boninti 2008-10 Mrs. John C. Lowry

    Nominations
    1982-86 Miss Jean Printz 1986-88 *Miss Jean Printz
    Parliamentarian and Editor of Register 1972-74 *Miss Jean Printz
    Plant Pest Control
    1924-26 *Mrs. William F. Long 1930-48 *Mrs. William J. Phillips
    Publications - The GCV Journal, District II 1980-82 *Mrs. Charles Davison Jr. 1982-84 *Mrs. Ernest V . Echols 1986-88 Mrs. T. J. Bentley Jr. 1992-94 Mrs. Myron E. Tremain
    Public Relations, Director of
    1970-72 *Miss Jean Printz

    Restoration
    1981-84 Mrs. Charles K. Woltz 1982-84 Miss Jean Printz 1984-93 Miss Jean Printz

    Symposium
    2007-08 Mrs. John C. Lowry 2009-10 Mrs. Edward D. Tayloe II

    Test Collections
    Rose

    1935-38 *Mrs. William F. Long

    *Chairman

     

     

    APPENDIX D

    The Garden Club of Virginia Awards Won by The Rivanna Garden Club

    Massie Medal (1929)
    1987 Mrs. Charles K. Woltz
    1991 Miss Jean Printz
    DeLacy Gray Medal (1965)
    1976 Miss Elisabeth Aiken Nolting 2001 Mrs. Andrew F. Boninti
    Common Wealth Award (1979)
    1987 Miller School of Albemarle Arboretum 1997 The Ivy Creek Natural Area
    Educational Building Landscaping 2011 Hatton Ferry Site Improvements
    Common Wealth Award Runner Up
    1984 Miller School of Albemarle Arboretum
    1985 Miller School of Albemarle Arboretum
    Best Yearbook ($25 War Bond)
    1944 Mrs. Harry L. Smith Jr.
    Elizabeth Cabell Dugdale Award
    1999 University of Virginia Foundation’s tree transplanting project 2007 Union Bank and Trust Branch preservation of site

    Horticulture Award of Merit
    1960 Mrs. Joseph F. Musselman 1962 Mrs. Austin D. Kilham 1967 Mrs. Charles K. Woltz
    1972 Miss Jean Printz
    1973 Miss Elisabeth A. Nolting
    1975 Miss Jesse W. Beams 1982 Mrs. William Rotch 1984 Mrs. William S. Edwards 1990 Martha Irby Kitchen (Now Mrs. William Hunt) 1994 Mrs. Andrew F. Boninti
    1995 Mrs. Eugene Paige
    2001 Mrs. Ralph A. Rush
    2002 Mrs. John C. Lowry
    2006 Mrs. A. E. Dick Howard
    2007 Mrs. Peter G. Eades
    2009 Mrs. James W. Patterson

     

    APPENDIX E

    The Garden Club of Virginia Meetings and Flower Shows Hosted by The Rivanna Garden Club

    May 16-18, 1928 May 12-13, 1942 May 10-12, 1966 May 21-23, 1985 May 9-11, 2006
    Annual Meeting Annual Meeting Annual Meeting Annual Meeting Annual Meeting
    1953 or 1954 1961 & 1962
    Conservation Forum
    Monticello Hotel, Mrs. E. J. Oglesby, Chairman
    2007 Lily
    Horticulture Field Day
    Charlottesville, Mrs. Peter G. Eades, Chairman
    1954
    Farmington Country Club
    Mrs. Austin D. Kilham, Chairman Mrs. Austin D. Kilham, Chairman

     

    Jefferson Hotel, Richmond
    Capt. & Mrs. Edgar M. Williams, Chairmen
    Flower Shows
    1961
    1977-78 Mrs. Charles K. Woltz & Mrs. John R. Morris, Jr., Chairmen 1995-96 UVA’s Alumni Hall
    Mrs. Martin Ochs & Mrs. Stanley P. Wilcox, Chairmen
    Rose
    1936 With Albemarle Garden Club,
    Farmington Country Club, (with Albemarle Garden Club)
    Mrs. H. T. Van Nostrand, Chairman 1940 Farmington Country Club,
    Mrs. Frank A. Geldard and Mrs. Delos B. Kidder, Chairmen 1949 Rotunda with Albemarle, Augusta, & Dolley Madison Garden Clubs

    Daffodil
    1968 Mrs. Carl McFarland

    Lily
    1957 Mrs. Joseph F. Musselman
    1958 Miss Elisabeth A. Nolting
    1963 Miss Elisabeth A. Nolting

    Rose
    1939 Mrs. William F. Long
    1958 Mrs. Edgar M. Williams
    1959 Mrs. Edgar M. Williams
    1960 Mrs. Edgar M. Williams
    1966 Mrs. Edgar M. Williams

    Flower Shows Challenge Cups and Winners
    Eleanor Truax Harris Challenge Cup (1937)
    Daffodil Show and Awards
    The Jacqueline Byrd Shank Memorial Trophy (1979) Best Miniature Bloom in Daffodil Show
    1993 Mrs. Andrew F. Boninti Lily Show Awards
    The Violet Niles Walker Memorial Cup
    (1948 - Lily Show For Horticultural Achievement) 1954 Mrs. Austin D. Kilham
    The Blanche Rohrer Davis Cup (1958 - Lily Show)
    2002 Mrs. John R. Morris Jr.

    Rose Show Awards

    Best Club Collection of Roses 1953 or 1954 At Monticello Hotel
    Mrs. E. J. Oglesby, Chairman 1961 & 1962 At Jefferson Hotel in Richmond

    Best Rose in Show
    1949 Mrs. Joseph H. O’Connell
    Best Arrangement in Show
    1964 Mrs. Carl McFarland

    American Rose Society Medal for Best Collection of Roses 1934 Mrs. William F. Long
    Capt. & Mrs. Edgar M. Williams, Chairmen
    Best Roses in the Show and Second Best Rose in Show 1961 Mrs. Keister Cochran
    Inter-Club Arrangement Blue Ribbons and Best in Show Lily Show 1993
    Mrs. Ernest H. Ern, Chairman

    Rose Show 1952
    Made By Mrs. Woodruff J. Rankin
    (No cup awarded but three clubs received Blue Ribbons) Mrs. John R. Morris, Jr., Chairman
    Mrs. Harry Benner, Chairman
    1974 2009

    Daffodil Show 2004
    Mrs. A. E. Dick Howard, Chairman Best in Show - Silver Chairman’s Cup
    The Captain and Mrs. Edgar M. Williams Perpetual Trophy (1977) Section VII, Class 76

    Flower Show Perpetual Trophies Given by The Rivanna Garden Club

    Past Presidents of The GCV Trophy (1983 - Given by Miss Jean Printz to Honor Past GCV Presidents for the Best Inter-Club Lily Arrangement)
    The Mary Jean Printz Perpetual Rose Award (2008) (Silver Vase) for Section III, Class 30
    Test Gardens Begun by the Rivanna Garden Club
    Lilac Test Garden Started
    1934 Only one in the GCV
    Herb Test Garden
    1938 Mrs. Joseph F. Musselman
    Iris Test Garden
    1957 Only one in the GCV
    Wright, in Hillsboro, Va.

     

    APPENDIX F

    The Rivanna Garden Club Projects Listed by Decade

    Legislation

    GCV Billboard Committee
    Lewis & Clark Statue Monticello
    Stonewall Jackson Statue Courthouse
    Blue Ridge Club

    Preservation

    Saved the historic Tarleton Oak from removal
    Participated in the campaign “To Plant Virginia in Dogwoods”
    Horticulture
    Established Test Gardens Daffodil
    Lilac
    Herb
    Rose Lily

     

    “Educational Campaign of the GCV Conservation Committee” Helped prevent the building of a dam at Goshen Pass

    Plantings

    City Library

    1920s

    Rivanna River Garden Club established November 16, 1922
    Rivanna Garden Club joined The Garden Club of Virginia in 1924
    Participated in first Historic Garden Week, 1929
    Encouraged participation by UVA Lawn and Pavilions
    Erected historical marker honoring Susan Koerner Wright, mother of Orville and Wilbur

    1930s

    Attempted to save Norris House (house razed)
    Saved the trees on High Street from removal

    Horticulture

    Established Iris Test Garden

    Preservation

    The City takes over the wildflower and bird sanctuary in McIntire Park after strong support by RGC members
    Victory Gardens - City allocated land, RGC provided seeds, fertilizer, and supervision of children who tended the gardens
    Created and implemented Friendly Gardens for Historic Garden Week

    Contributions

    Nature Camp at Vesuvius

    Legislation

    Lobbied for passage of billboard legislation

    Plantings

    Donated dogwoods on Jefferson Park Avenue

    Preservation

    Contributions

    Donated books on horticulture and gardening to McIntire Library Donated a book collection on herbs to the Gordon Avenue Library Donated funds to the Martha Jefferson Hospital Building Fund

    Legislation

    Supported bill controlling billboard advertising on Interstate Highways Fought against litter
    Opposed school site at McIntire Park

    Plantings

    Planted at Rescue Squad building
    Designed and planted the Susie Badger Kilham Study Garden at St. Anne’s School Planted at Tros Dale Home for Boys
    Landscaped Miller School
    Became a charter member of the Albemarle Beautification Commission; provided and planted concrete flower boxes on Main Street

    1950s

    1960s

    Preservation

    Opposed the building of a motel in the Court Square area Urged restriction of signs in the downtown area Surveyed illegal automobile graveyards
    Fought against litter
    Madison Library
    Landscaped Martha Jefferson Hospital

    Contributions

    Landscaped Bicentennial Building entrance
    Planted to prevent erosion at Camp Holiday Trails
    Funded the Virginia Forest Educational Fund
    Donated environmental books to local schools
    Contributed to GCV endowment fund Kent-Valentine House, 50th anniversary Contributed scholarships for campers at Nature Camp at Versuvius
    Donated books on horticulture and gardening to Alderman Library
    Gifted wooden planters of Korean boxwood to Albemarle Charlottesville

    Legislation

    Opposed the Penal Diagnostic and Reception Center in Historic Green Springs,
    Louisa County Fought against litter

    Plantings

    Planted dogwoods on Rt. 250 Bypass
    Donated shrubbery, bulbs, and ground covers to several fraternities Planned, maintained, and planted herbs and perennials at Ash Lawn
    donated the wellhead
    Published the first local brochure for HGW 1977

    1970s

    Historical Society
    Gave poinsettias and kalanchoes to Comyn Hall
    Gathered members’ flowers for UVA Hospital
    Landscaped at Brownsville Elementary School
    Donated tree for Queen Elizabeth to plant at The Bicentennial Information Center Provided decorations for the Cedars for residents of the Cedars and the Jefferson
    1987 Common Wealth Award winner for the Miller School of Albemarle Arboretum after being a runner up twice

    Contributions

    Provided gifts for and held a wreath making workshop at the Attention Home Supplied greens for workshop at the High Rise for the Elderly
    Funded scholarships, Nature Camp, and ARC Camp
    Studied rare and endangered species of animals in Virginia
    Decorated Ash Lawn, McIntire Library, and for the Historic
    Charlottesville House Tour
    Contributed decorations to Comyn Hall
    Provided flowers for the UVA Hospital
    Contributed to the Wildlife Center of Virginia to purchase a van, van named
    The ARC for Albemarle, Rivanna and Charlottesville Garden Clubs

    Plantings

    Planted additional perennials and maintained gardens at Ash Lawn, donated a fence Established a rose garden in front of City Hall
    “Plant a Tree Project” on the Downtown Mall Assisted with landscaping Red Cross building
    Held a novice gardening course on landscaping, gardening and flower arranging
    Became a 501(c)(3)
    Established the ARC Camp at Panorama Farms with Albemarle and Charlottesville Garden Clubs, and provided volunteers
    Created a recycling brochure with Albemarle and Charlottesville Garden Clubs

    1990s

    1997 Common Wealth Award winner for the Landscaping the Ivy Creek Natural Area Educational Building Contributions

    Contributions

    Planted and funded the Kilham Garden at St. Anne’s Belfield School Gave scholarships to the Nature Camp
    Provided volunteers and scholarships to the ARC Camp
    Continued work on Arboretum at Miller School
    Sponsored a Christmas greens workshop and gifts for the Attention Home Contributed funding for the Thomas Jefferson Parkway Children’s Garden Created and maintained an entrance garden at Westhaven
    Funded landscaping at the Ronald McDonald House of Charlottesville
    Participated in the Junior League’s Holiday House Tour
    1999 Elizabeth Cabell Dugdale Award of University of Virginia Foundation’s tree transplanting project
    Proposed the Elizabeth Cabell Dugdale Award for Conservation winner in 2007 - Union Bank and Trust Branch at Barracks Road and Cedars Court

    2000 - 2012

    2011 Common Wealth Award Winner for the Hatton Ferry to provide site stabilization and improvements

    Contributions

    Awarded scholarships to the ARC Camp
    Held greens workshop at the Blue Ridge House
    Supported the Nature Camp at Versuvius, annual scholarships and endowment fund Contributed to the Flora of Virginia book
    Donated to Venable School Habitat Fund
    Funded the Rivanna Conservation Society’s Watershed Summit and other projects Sponsored a Christmas greens workshop and gifts for the Attention Home Mother’s Day project at the Alternative School
    Donated funds for landscaping the Shelter for Help in Emergency
    Funded a pair of gardens at The Covenant School’s upper school campus
    Decorated the Amtrak Station at Christmas with other local GCV clubs Gave the money for a gate at the Charles B. Holt Rock House
    Provided capital for International Rescue Committee’s New Roots project
    for seeds, tools and other garden equipment
    Gave to City Schoolyard Garden for Garden Shed initiative at Buford Middle School Restored the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society garden
    Initiated the Hatton Ferry Endowment Fund, interpretive historical signage
    Provided capital for Miller School tree replacement and tree plaques
    Funded Henry Avenue Learning Center greenhouse

    Plantings

    Planted a maple tree at the entrance to the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport in memory of the victims of September 11th
    Planted a garden at Camp Holiday Trails
    Continued to maintain and landscape the garden at Westhaven
    Adopted a biofilter project at Crozet Park
    Participated in the Rivanna Conservation Day riverbank tree planting project
    Participated in Through the Garden Gate tours sponsored by the Extension Service