GCA Scholar Eric Schwartz spent time in Nebraska, an area ravaged by the Dust Bowl in the early 1930s. Eric, a 2024 Moore Family Fellow in the Making of the American Landscape, was there to study the New Deal-era Prairie States Forestry Project, which planted 200 millions trees in an effort to restore and improve the devastated land. This photo essay serves as a reminder that our association with GCA extends far beyond our garden club and all the way around the world! The GCA distributed almost $460,000 in scholarships in fiscal year 2024 and $402,000 in 2023.
CONSERVATION
ORCHIDS: CONSERVATION AND COLLABORATION, New Smithsonian Institute Exhibit Now Open
HORTICULTURE, CONSERVATIONFor centuries, orchids have brought us inspiration. Today, orchids also inspire conservation – the work to protect our environment for the future. The future of orchids is lush, bold, inspiring, and something that we can realize together. This year’s orchid exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute, The Future of Orchids : Conservation and collaboration takes visitors on a deep dive into the weird and wild world of orchids, highlighting large scale artworks that invite visitors to unexpected forms that entice pollinators, foster genetic diversity, and improve the plants’ ability to survive.
SAVING SEEDS - AN INTRODUCTION TO THE BASICS
HORTICULTURE, CONSERVATIONDo you save seeds? These days, more and more gardeners are interested in keeping seeds from the plants in their garden, but it’s a process that can be intimidating. Read excerpts from Lauren Davis’ recent article interview in the Washington Post (October 3, 2023) with Emily Murphy, regenerative organic gardener and author of “Grow Now: How We Can Save Our Health, Communities, and Planet — One Garden at a Time.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2023/10/03/gardening-advice-harvest-preserve-seeds/
GCW’s Exhibit at the Zone V Mini Meeting October 2019
CONSERVATION, INVASIVE SPECIESAt the recent Zone V Mini Meeting, each of the clubs in Zone V exhibited a display, highlighting an issue pertinent to the subject of the Conference. As part of the meeting each club created an exhibit of their choosing. The exhibits reflect the mini meeting theme ‘A Nod to Natives, sustaining our birds, bees and trees’. This was an opportunity to assemble a display that might be used again by the club and was a chance to show the club’s creative strengths.
GCW’s Exhibit at the Zone V Mini Meeting
Dr. Richard Lightly, one of the Club Advisory Committee members, has taken on an extensive renovation of the fields and woods around Coniston/Kendal aimed at rejuvenating open spaces for birds/insect habitat with an emphasis on the eradication of invasive and planting of natives. This exhibit highlighted that restoration project. It was a joint effort between the Conservation Committee and the Horticulture Committee. The intent of the exhibit was: Saving and Restoring the Coniston Woodland: Lessons learned from seven years of vine suppression, large invasive shrub removal and replanting a woodland with native trees.
Special thanks go to Dr. Richard Lighty for the documenting and researching the project, as well as Cecelia Habgood for all of the spectacular artwork.
Other Clubs in the Zone featured exhibits on other issues, such a pollinator habitat.
Ban on Single-Use Plastic Bags Signed into Law in Delaware
CONSERVATIONGov. John Carney on Monday signed legislation that largely prohibits retailers in Delaware from providing single-use carryout plastic bags to customers, a measure intended to reduce the amount of plastic bags making their way to landfills, roadways and stormwater systems.
The ban applies to stores with more than 7,000 square feet of sales space, and chain stores with three or more locations having at least 3,000 square feet of sales space. Restaurants are excluded from the bag ban, which also allows exceptions for bags used to wrap meat, fish, flowers or plants, or that contain unwrapped food items. The legislation is set to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2021.
Gov. John Carney signs a bill that largely prevents retailers from offering customers single-use plastic bags.
The goal is to encourage a shift to to reusable bags. Additionally, the legislation aims to clean up Delaware’s communities and watersheds, reduce storm water and trash management costs to taxpayers, and promote the health and safety of watersheds, wildlife and humans, and the ecosystem’s food chain.
Every year, the average American uses approximately 500 plastic carryout bags. Single use plastics are made from natural gas or petroleum, a fossil fuel with extensive environmental impacts in its extraction, production, and transportation.
Along Delaware's coastlines, despite the current voluntary recycling law put in place in 2009, plastic carryout bags remain one of the most prevalent and pervasive types of litter found annually during the annual Coastal Cleanup which is only three hours each September. Statistics maintained by Delaware’s Recycling Public Advisory Council indicate that the current law has not achieved its goal of shifting shoppers’ norms to reusable bags. In addition, plastic is the most prevalent item found in a 2018 study of Delaware’s roadside litter.