The Inverness Garden Club is definitely about gardening: its membership includes several Marin Master Gardeners and many others who have devoted a lot of TLC to some of the finest ornamental and vegetable gardens of West Marin. But it does much more.
Public spaces
The C.P.C., as we call the Community Projects Committee, maintains many public spaces: Plant Park, the Gables Garden at the library and the very important median strip in Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, in Inverness. In Point Reyes Station, the committee maintains flower boxes at the post office, the visitor center and the library.
The committee has helped fund West Marin School’s garden, as well as the garden at Papermill Creek Children’s Corner, the playground behind Toby’s and the Walnut House planter boxes, which were built in conjunction with the West Marin Rotary Club. You also will see C.P.C.’s work at Mesa House and in the berm behind the Dance Palace.
In November, the committee helps decorate the tables for the annual Thanksgiving dinner sponsored by West Marin Community Services. Then, a few days later, it creates swags of local greenery for 19 Point Reyes Station and Inverness nonprofit organizations, which look forward to our adornment of their entryways.
Education
Over the years, the club has sponsored numerous public programs on environmental and gardening topics ranging from permaculture to the historic gardens of Italy, the local Fibershed Project, owls, rodent control and irrigation. We look for topics of interest to our members and to the community, and find speakers to conduct the seminars. Charlotte Torgovitsky, a local native plant propagation expert, shared her craft with us at one of these programs. Our booth at the Inverness Fair every August features many plants propagated by members.
Our communications committee produces a newsletter for members every month, with alternate months including horticultural articles of particular relevance to the season. We learn how to wake up our gardens, how to put them to bed for the winter, mulch, save seed and be better gardeners in this coastal climate, all the while conserving water. Many of us grow vegetables and fruits, and we share them with the community whenever possible.
Scholarship
Our scholarship committee is probably the best-known function of the garden club. This committee is comprised of dedicated club members whose focus is on raising funds and selecting and supporting local scholars. A three-member committee actively keeps in touch with scholarship recipients, helping them address issues that might arise with transcripts and course loads and generally just providing moral support.
The committee, which made its first scholarship award in 1961, today has 53 active scholars in college, with annual support at $278,000. The committee receives guidance from professional money managers and others in its work. The responsibility for being able to continue support for a scholar throughout his or her undergraduate years is a serious one, and we are fortunate to have a dedicated group of volunteer managers for our scholarship fund.
If you have any questions for the Inverness Garden Club—and especially questions about gardening to be addressed in a future issue—please send an email to [email protected].
Kathy Hartzell is an active member of the Inverness Garden Club, where she has served as vice president, president and treasurer/bookkeeper for two years each. She enjoys fostering partnerships between the club and other organizations in the community.