PERENNIAL GARDEN CLUB HISTORY

The Perennial Garden Club of Washington, DC, was founded in 1950 by thirty young women who were taking a flower arranging class from Mrs. Herbert Greger, a member of The Trowel Club. She encouraged the group to form their own garden club, which they did, and they were admitted into the Garden Club of America in 1960. A devotion to the art and beauty of flowers and a dedication to horticulture, conservation, and preservation have inspired an ongoing commonality of purpose. Perennial members work together to have an impact on their city, the nation’s capital.​

Following the club’s first civic garden project in 1951 at the Washington City Orphan Asylum, Perennial’s other landscaping projects have included Decatur House (a National Trust property) and, from 1971-73, the entrance garden of Blair House, the official guest quarters for State visitors to the United States. In 1998, Perennial received the GCA Zone VI Historic Preservation Award for restoration of the gardens at the historic Woodrow Wilson House, and for 25 years the club hosted the immensely–and still—popular annual garden party. Other projects have included the therapeutic gardens at the National Rehabilitation Hospital and nine Habitat for Humanity gardens. With three other Washington, DC, GCA clubs, Perennial installed plants along the banks of the Anacostia River to add oxygen to its waters and a habitat to draw fish and birds.

Perennial is filled with talented members, and awards have been plentiful. Multiple Zone and Club awards have been given to members in the fields of horticulture, conservation, civic improvement, floral design, and photography. We are active in Zone affairs: our membership includes former Directors, Artistic and Horticulture judges, and Zone Representatives in many categories. In 1975 and again in 2004 and 2017, we co-sponsored Garden Club of America Annual meetings. Additionally, the club sponsored three 2-3-day symposia. The topics were researched with specialists at the National Arboretum and included biodiversity and the origin of plants from China and Japan.

In 2012, Perennial Garden Club was awarded GCA’s prestigious Founders Fund Award for “Growing Minds and Spirits,” an urban educational landscape project at the Bishop John T. Walker School for Boys (BWS), located in a chronically-underserved area east of the Anacostia River. BWS is a tuition-free elementary school that serves low-income families of all faith traditions. Perennial designed an educational landscape, introducing children to the natural world and the importance of caring for nature’s gifts. In 2016, the National Arboretum’s Washington Youth Garden selected BWS for the three-year Garden Science program, a significant achievement.

In 2020, our club published a booklet to encourage members to add native plants to their gardens. The goal was to use native plantings to create healthier backyards that no longer required pesticides, fertilizer, or extra watering and that would attract the birds, butterflies, and other pollinators that were no longer coming to our gardens. Our booklet would be a guide—and a pathway—to restoring our increasingly fragile ecosystem. Responding to a GCA initiative and inspired by a similar project by the Garden Club of Palm Beach, Florida, our club horticulturists and photographers, with help from the Georgetown Garden Club, compiled lists of plantings native to our region, as well as photographs of many of them taken over a period of eighteen months. There was also an extensive list of native plant nurseries in the Washington-Baltimore area, plus websites and resources. The result was a beautiful, practical pamphlet, Going Native, Creating Healthier Gardens with Native Pollinator Plantings in Zone VI of the Garden Club of America. Perennial underwrote the cost of mailing a copy to every member of Zone VI as well as to the GCA Executive Committee and Horticulture and Conservation national chairs. It was our hope that many other clubs around the country would undertake similar projects.

Perennials are a delightful mix of ages and experience. Members ask provocative questions, respond energetically to challenges, grow marvelous flowers and plants in their own special gardens, and work diligently to meet the exacting standards of GCAmembership. We are involved in the community and love getting our hands dirty.