Club News

Club reports are highlighted here when they submit reports for GCI's Garden Glories publication.

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Antioch Garden Club

Antioch Garden Club is 30 years old this year! What a milestone for a little garden club in a little
town. Our membership has grown, our community involvement has grown, and our gardens have
grown. We’re not so little anymore! Three cheers to our club’s anniversary and to our wonderful
membership! This past year has brought a lot of joy to our members and to our community:
Annual Plant Sale: For more than 20 years we have held our ever-popular plant sale. The
community lines up early because they know our plants are locally grown with love. It was another
successful sale day. The membership worked hard, made new friends and welcomed back return
buyers.
Community Events: We always try to be present when there is an event in Antioch. We participate
in the popular wine walks, community festival days and parades. People can recognize us by our
bright green shirts and always compliment us on our beautiful gardens.
Fall Fun: As the season turns from warm to cool we are not cooling off in our enthusiasm. We will
participate in the Antioch Fall Festival Family Event. We will be distributing free seedlings to guests
and sharing knowledge of gardening. As the season changes, we will do our annual fall cleanup
which is marked by enthusiastic full club participation. Antioch Garden Club will be there whenever
there is a community event!

Antioch Garden Club www.antiochgardenclub.or

Arlington Heights Garden Club

The Arlington Heights Garden Club continues to evolve our events and areas of focus. The big change this summer was converting our plant sale to all natives and seed grown vegetables, herbs and annuals. This eliminated the chance that we’d inadvertently spread jumping worms. We also educated many shoppers about the benefits of planting natives, allowing us to contribute to helping the environment one plant at a time. Our annual Garden Walk featured 5 homes and one community garden, allowing the AH Memorial Library to showcase their pollinator garden to the public. Huge thanks to all the volunteers, vendors and attendees who braved the June heatwave to make this event a success. 4 of our 5 scholarship winners attended the June member meeting and shared their education plans and appreciation for the scholarships they received. We are grateful to be able to help support these students in a material way with their focus on the environment.
Our programming year resumes in September with presentations planned from the Tree Keepers and Citizens for Conservation, and programs on soil microbiology, birds, and local gardens. Our Fall programming and meeting information will be posted on our website, www.ahgardenclub.com in August.

Field & flower Garden Club of Barrington

Field & Flower Garden Club of Barrington is pleased to announce that our annual May plant sale doubled our
profits from last year. This money is used to pay for speakers throughout the year, and if we continue to be
successful, we may be able to use the extra resources for a community project.
Our fall schedule starts off with “Shady Characters: Nifty Plants for Shady Sites” with speaker Heather Prince. Her
presentation promises to cover the different types of shade and soil conditions to consider for a successful shade
garden. Our next meeting will be a time of sharing photos from our members’ gardens. In October we will be
anxious to hear from Brian Thomson of the Honey Lake Bee Co., as he presents, “What’s All the Buzz About Bees?”
This presentation looks at how a beehive works, how to start a beehive in your backyard, and how to harvest honey.
Honey Lake Bee Co. has thriving bee colonies at their location, so we are hoping for a tour as well. Our November
program will be our annual Greens Workshop, by which we will be creating fabulous holiday arrangements for our
homes. We close our fall schedule with a Holiday Pot Luck held at a member’s home in town. There is so much to
look forward to this fall!

Garden Club of Barrington

The Garden Club of Barrington is celebrating its 100th Anniversary this year. At its first meeting in
October of 1925 a group of Barrington women met and established the objectives for the
organization: stimulating the knowledge and love of gardening, aiding in the protection of native
plants and birds, and encouraging civic planting. This fall the club will be presenting a photography
show entitled “Through the Garden Gate: A Century of Growth”. Each of the six classes in the show
highlights how the club has honored those original objectives throughout its history. One class
focuses on plant cultivation, another native grasses, and still another on teaching children to enjoy
nature.

In June the club presented a judged non-standard flower show entitled “America the Beautiful”.
Classes included multicolored foliage and underwater designs. Another highlighted iconic American
architecture through flower color. Our 1925 predecessors would have been proud of the members’
efforts and creativity.

The club continues its civic activities: weeding and maintaining a native shrub and forb garden at
one of the parks in the village keep members busy as does the maintenance of a garden at the local
library. Monthly, members meet to create bouquets for patients at our local hospice center. We are
sure our founding mothers would approve of our commitment to their original objective

Garden Club of Inverness

The Garden Club of Inverness celebrated their 85th anniversary this past membership year. In May, the Club awarded $14,000 in scholarships to area students pursuing degrees in environmental fields of study. Additionally, GCI donated an Autumn Blaze Freeman Maple to the Village of Inverness celebrating both the Club’s 85th anniversary and the Village’s 34th year as a Tree City USA.
In August, the special events lineup starts with a visit to member Deb Graham of Midwest Fruit Explorers own home orchard featuring over 50 fruit tree varieties. In September, Club members explore Aqualand in St. Charles viewing their ponds, waterfalls, and the new addition of many varieties of tropical aquatic water lilies. Members will be delighted by the August meeting program when two Club members present a short program highlighting their adventures at the Chelsea Flower Show in London. Through pictures and narrative they’ll provide an overview of the individual garden exhibits, as well as the many sculptures and individual floral displays. This will be followed in September with a program focusing on studies done of solitary bee populations

Garden Club of Lake Zurich – Fall 2025

The Club is looking forward to many interesting fall programs as we begin our new 2025 program year. We’ll dive into topics like harvesting herbs, discovering how glaciers shaped Illinois’s terrain, and finding inspiration in the many beautiful public gardens across the US from which to add to our future travel plans. We’re thrilled by the growing number of guests attending our meetings, thanks to the diverse and engaging programs we offer. We also feel encouraged that some of our visitors have chosen to become members, and we’re delighted to see how enthusiastic our newcomers are to get involved in projects and deepen their understanding of gardening and environmental sustainability.
After our annual spring plant sale, our members have been busy tending the Ela Public Library gardens, hosting a lovely members’ garden walk, plus attending several tours. As summer winds down, the board hosts the annual Fall Harvest dinner where we all gather, pass a dish from our garden bounty, and take time for comradery and friendship as we share our past growing season’s challenges and successes.

For more information on our programs, visit or contact us at gardencluboflakezurich.org or find us on Facebook

Garden Club of Mount Prospect

Summer 2025 found our club visiting the gardens at the Baha’i Temple in Wilmette, and then visiting local gardens for our annual garden walk. Our committees stay busy tending multiple gardens at the Mount Prospect Historical Society as well as the butterfly garden in Mohling Park. We have set a goal to increase our club participation in the August flower show at the Botanic Garden. After welcoming fourteen new members this past year, we are excited to keep them active and involved.

Home and Garden Club of Libertyville and Mundelein.

June 12th meeting our club visited Ryerson woods in Riverwoods for a presentation on the owls of lake county by the lake county forest preserve.

July 10th meeting will be at grow space vertical farms in Kenosha WI. We will learn about vertical farm using hydroponics and aeroponics.

August 21st we will visiting Ryerson Woods for a grounds tour and learn about the buildings at the preserve with a member of the lake county forest preserve.

September 18th we will be viewing a webinar presentation by Melinda Myers on Fall landscape planting and care.

October 16th we will have a hands on project with pine cones.

Lincolnshire Garden Club

The Lincolnshire Garden Club continues to support the greater community with our upkeep of the Blue Star Memorial Garden, our two pollinator gardens, and flower beds at the Riverside Foundation for adults with developmental delays. In addition we have gardening projects with the Women’s Residential Services program as well as gardening and nature projects with incarcerated youth.

Our annual summer garden walk has been a great way to engage and educate new members and the broader community.

In the past few years our club has developed a new activity—travel in the US or abroad to visit amazing gardens. This year an intrepid group of a dozen went to England and took in the Chelsea Garden show as well as touring many beautiful English gardens. We’re looking forward to another great lineup of Educational Programs for the upcoming year which you are invited to join. The programs run September through May and the topics are listed on our website. We hope you will join us.

Be sure to bookmark our website https://lincolnshiregardenclub.com/home to stay abreast of our programs and other activities.

Northbrook Garden Club

We chose two high school seniors for scholarships this year because they both were so qualified. We met Chloe at our June luncheon, she eventually wants to study environmental law. Our other winner, Ryan, was already at his summer job and had to regretfully decline the lunch invitation. These two shining stars will go far and we're proud to provide a little help on their journey.
Members manned a table at Northbrook Climate Day, explaining the benefits of native plants and giving away plants and trees. We also demonstrated the "mosquito bucket of doom" to help homeowners stop the life cycle of mosquitoes before they become adults without using toxic chemicals.
Coming up will be more educational and fun interactions at Shermerfest, the historical celebration of our town and also the weekly Farmers Market.
We're in continuing collaboration with the Northbrook Public Library, having just completed planting their annuals in large outdoor planters and working on plans for their outdoor bed surrounding the Library sign. That's a project that will be filled with perennial plants and one part will be completed before the heat of summer. It was an honor to be asked if we would like to help plant this year.
We look forward to our summer garden tours, they provide camaraderie, knowledge, and new friendships. Any member can participate and we see everything from formal designs to vegetable gardens to well designed native gardens.

If you want to use any of these photos, you have permission:
Cindy Blue, Northbrook Garden Club

Prospecy Heights Garden Club

This past club year we enjoyed speakers on topics ranging from Owls, Orchids, Hemp & CBD, Botany Basics, Tea, & the Cut Flower Industry. We learned the practice of “Winter Sowing” from a long-time member & even took a field trip to Northwind Perennial Farm in southeastern Wisconsin.

Looking ahead to Fall & 2026, we’ll look forward to hearing speakers on Scam Prevention, Flowers at the White House, Chinese Paper Cut Flowers, Japanese Floral Arranging and the Intelligence of the Black Crow.

Our Garden Club is where Friendships Grow!

Town and Country Garden Club of Libertyville

This year has been one of expansion: We are excited that we've added several new members; we expanded our civic plantings with a new pollinator garden at the community library; we increased our scholarship value, and we expanded our civic donations by supporting the John R. Lewis Middle School's impressive gardening programs.

Our Hidden Gems Garden Walk was once again very successful. This is a key element of our club's activities and provides us with the opportunities for expansion and presence in our Libertyville community.

As we turn to Fall/Winter, our civic plantings will transition to beautiful dried flower arrangements and evergreen winter themes. Educational programs include a unique tree stroll in Cook Park where members will learn how to identify trees, their unique characteristics and how to select for their yard. In November, our
program will be "How to Turn Your Garden into a Bed & Breakfast for Birds" discussing how to transform backyards into a showcase of bird activity. Our club is also encouraging the skill of flower arranging by having a "Mug of the Month" where each month a member creates a floral arrangement in a simple coffee mug. At our December holiday luncheon, there will be a member "Mini Flower Show" creating delightful floral creations in holiday mugs.

Wauconda Garden Club

The Wauconda Garden Club has been very busy since the last issue not the least of which is planning our upcoming celebration in July for our 50th Anniversary! Our annual plant sale was held in May from which the proceeds allow us to give out two scholarships to two Wauconda High School Students. We continue to help maintain the Path of Honor that connects three memorials, the 9/11 Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial and Memorial Park which honors WWI and WWII veterans. We also continue to tend to the Pollinator Pathway which we helped create along Main Street along with the Main Street Planter, with more than 225 native plants, the Mayor also asked us to design Monarch/ Pollinator Garden beds at Village Hall which will extend our Pollinator Pathway even further. Several members meet monthly at Alta re-hab facility and do hands-on projects with the patients as well as bringing some joy through plantings they do outside the facility and we continue to help beautify the grounds at Kuester Manor which is a senior living facility. The club has started a program at Frassati Catholic Academy to introduce the students to the importance of monarchs and the vital role they play in our environment in which the students are given a milkweed plug to care for and then a fun contest is held to see who’s has grown the most. A regular activity for the club is to participate in the Memorial Day Parade where members pass out seed packets to the crowds. We partnered with the city in the planning of the first Wauconda Victory Garden where residents could put their names in and be selected by lottery for six garden plots. A field trip to Northwinds Perennial Farm in Burlington, WI with lunch in Lake Geneva was a welcomed outing for our members. Because of all the community involvement the club has been a part of we have been asked by the Mayors office to submit for the Governor’s Home Town Award.

Wheeling Garden Club

The Wheeling celebrated its’ 30th anniversary this year and currently has 17 members. We meet the second Wednesday of the month from March through November with an installation lunch in January. Most of our meetings are at the Community Center.

This year we were proud to celebrate receiving District and State First Place awards for an “On-Going Civic” project-a youth vegetable garden project held in co-operation with the Indian Trails Public Library which donates produce to the Wheeling Township Food Pantry. In addition, we maintain two other civic gardens-one a Blue Star Memorial garden at AmVets, and a kitchen garden at the Wheeling Historical Museum.

We will be hosting a “Celebrating Our Gardens” display at the library at the end of July which will be open to the public. Members will also be attending, displaying, and working a the District IX Flower Show at the Chicago Botanic Garden in August.