SOUTH CAROLINA

The Garden Club of South Carolina, Inc.
Theme - "Pathways to Learning, Growing and Creating Beauty"
Marsha Alexander, President

The members of the Garden Club of South Carolina are busy with the District Meetings in September and early October.  This is a very exciting time of the year, as Garden Club members get back to planning the new Garden Club year with interesting programs and projects.  Visiting with our members throughout the State at the Fall Meetings and reading the Yearbooks, our members are planning many activities that will make a difference in their communities.
   
Growing our Membership is one of the challenges throughout the State.  Members are being encouraged to invite friends to Garden Club Meetings and share the plans for the year…then invite them again!  Better public relations is always a challenge, but it’s important to keep trying.  Garden Tours in each District are being encouraged during National Garden Week as a great way to interest new members.  Educational Opportunities sponsored by Garden Club members is also being encouraged to interest new members. 
   
The Garden Club of South Carolina members own a beautiful Garden in Columbia, that was given in the 1940’s, as the first Memorial Garden in the United States.  Four years ago, a restoration project was begun on the hardscaping in the Garden.  This July we received the new plans for landscaping the garden, a Cathedral Garden originally designed by Loutrel Briggs.  The new plan is designed, keeping the integrity of the original plan.  Members are excited about restoring this lovely Garden to once again be used for garden parties, weddings, Memorial Day celebrations, and the enjoyment of visitors.
   
To help our members accomplish the goal of our Regional Director and the SAR Unified Project, GCSC is offering members a matching grant opportunity known as Pathways to Beautification.  This will be for civic beautification projects, schoolyard gardens, healing gardens, meditation gardens, and patriotic gardens.   Members are also being encouraged to apply for the NGC Principal Financial Grant opportunity. 
   
Another of the President’s projects is a Children’s Garden at the Shriners Hospital in Greenville, South Carolina.  Creating a garden where children can watch butterflies as they flutter and find pollen, watch birds as they land on a feeder or splatter in a water feature, plant a perennial or annual to enjoy as they visit the garden is planned.  To accomplish some of these goals, GCSC members are working on a Cookbook which will be for sale in the Spring.

Quoting from an article by a GCSC Board member, Bill Patterson, “Can the old be new again? Perhaps in the sense of reflection one can dream of the days of the old South, when roses and especially the Noisettes filled the air with fragrance as they sprawled throughout the gardens of South Carolina.”  Members are being encouraged to plant these roses, first discovered in Charleston in the 1700-1800’s.  GCSC is doing a Trial Garden with over fifty varieties of the Noisettes at the Edisto Gardens in Orangeburg.  Try planting one in your Garden!
 
The new GCSC website has been up since July.  Please visit it and learn about more exciting things happening in South Carolina at www.gardencentral.org/gcsc.