This 75-year-old has a colorful past and is rightly proud of it.
The Everett Garden Club started in September 1938 and members recently celebrated the milestone.
A party at Everett Golf and Country Club highlighted 75 years of continued service by members, past and present. Guests included Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson and officers of other garden clubs.
“We’re just trying to continue the legacy of what the gals started,” club secretary Barb O’Brien said. “We’ve had lots of challenges.”
The club currently has about 40 members.
“It had over 200 at one point,” O’Brien said. “It got down to six people. When I came on about 10 years there were about 20 to 25.”
The goals have evolved with the times.
“When it started in 1938 it was social, more like the doctors’ wives who did it. It has really changed over the years to what it is,” she said.
“We just want to learn more about gardening. We love our gardens. We want to be more educated. We’re always learning. We’re trying to do more community things. We helped the arboretum get going.”
If there had been no Everett Garden Club, there would be no Evergreen Arboretum and Gardens.
In 1963, the garden club planted the arboretum’s first tree, a pin oak. The story goes that some businessmen wanted a golf course in the same spot that the club wanted the arboretum.
Long story short: That original pin oak still stands at the 10th hole. The arboretum sits next to Legion Memorial Golf Course.
The arboretum has a sculpture garden, theme gardens, and plants from conifers and Japanese maples to perennials and native species. The arboretum hosts weddings, graduations and other parties.
The club has a plant sale every year on the day before Mother’s Day.
One more thing: “It’s not a ladies club,” O’Brien said. “We’re always trying to get more men to come.”
The club meets at 10 a.m. on the second Wednesday of the month at Memorial Community Church, 710 Pecks Drive, Everett.
For more information, call 425-257-2255 or email everettgardenclub@hotmail.com.
Andrea Brown; 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com.
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