A few weeks ago, I came across my friend, Ewell McIslaac, weeding the narrow garden patch in front of the Point Reyes post office. Ewell also tends the flowering plants in the planter boxes there. Perhaps you’ve seen Linda and Barry Linder weeding in the median island in Inverness, or Vivian Mazur clipping shrubs in the Inverness library garden. These ladies (and gentleman) are volunteers from the Inverness Garden Club.
Ordinarily, the monthly Coastal Gardener column is about gardening. This month, it is about gardeners, the gardeners of the club and what they do to enhance West Marin’s horticultural environment. Let’s begin with a little bit of history.
Eighty years ago, the Inverness Garden Club was started by a small group of energetic women who enjoyed monthly teas at each other’s homes, and who liked gardens and gardening. Over the years, the organization has grown in membership and purpose; today it carries out four main missions with energy and skill:
Stimulate the knowledge and
appreciation of gardening; provide college scholarships
to qualified West Marin residents; promote the beautification of our local community; protect and preserve native plants and habitats.
Another important project has been the monthly column on gardening in this newspaper. The column was started in 1988, when a few skillful women gardeners began writing a monthly column for the paper; later, Russell Ridge and Gini Havel, official garden club horticulturists and professional botanists, wrote many of these articles. For the past several years, other avid gardeners have contributed their advice to these columns, including Alice Eckart, Ann Emanuels, Martha Proctor, Carolyn Longstreth, Kathy Hartzell, Julie Monson and many others.
Over the years, the club has also sponsored community workshops and programs on topics as varied as pruning and grafting fruit trees, organic garden techniques, growing tomatoes, and gardens as havens for birds, bees and butterflies. About 10 years ago, the Inverness Association and the garden club collaborated on installing the median island in Inverness. It was an effort to slow down speeding cars, as well as to beautify this tiny commercial area. The association contracted with the county for the required permits and installed the curbs and irrigation system. Garden club members selected the plant material, installed it and still maintain it. This attractive patch of grasses and perennials continues to please all who walk or drive by, and has inspired further local garden improvements.
In addition to articles and programs related to promoting awareness of sound garden practices, garden club volunteers actively garden—as in digging, weeding, pruning and watering. Vivian Mazur keeps the Inverness library trimmed, and a small crew works to maintain the pretty garden in Plant Park in Inverness. Patsy Bannerman maintains a flowering box in front of the Point Reyes library.
At the annual summer Inverness Fair in August, the club has a fabulous plant sale of cuttings, annuals, perennials, ferns and even small trees donated by its members, often nurtured over a year just for the sale. These are plants that thrive in the area, and they are a great source of new material for your garden.
The club is also acclaimed for its highly successful scholarship fund, which each year raises money from our community to support college scholarships for qualified residents of West Marin. This past year, the fund provided $272,000 in scholarship support to 52 young scholars.
Next time you pass by a lady wearing a hat and garden gloves and busily tending any one of these public garden areas, remember to either thank the Inverness Garden Club in your thoughts, or speak directly to one of these volunteers. It’s hard work, and it often feels unrewarded. But it’s a part of what makes our special West Marin character—our sense of place—work for everyone.
Julie Monson, a lifelong learner, lives in Point Reyes Station and likes to cook, read and garden. This column is sponsored by the Inverness Garden Club.