History of Great Meadows Garden Club

         The Great Meadows Garden Club was organized in 1957 by women from the mountain area  The club joined the Garden Club Federation of Pennsylvania in 1958.
 
         The object of the club from its beginning remains the same today - to stimulate the knowledge and love of gardening; to aid in the protection of native trees, plants and birds; to encourage civic planting; to take an active interest in flower arranging and home decoration.
 
         Nell Sherry, founder, named the club Great Meadows and wrote the collect, which is still in use today.  To recruit members, she went from house to house.  She was so successful that at the third meeting there were 81 ladies present.  Today there are 61 members in the club.

This picture was taken in Ruth Eberly's living room where this group of ladies
discussed starting the Garden Club.  Nell Sherry is in the back row, second from the left.
Photo courtesy of Nell Sherry's great-granddaughter, Charlene Sherry Friend.

          None of the early members had any knowledge of the floral design but they worked together to learn the basics.  Some of the members tell stories about groups of women working together late into the night in someone's garage to complete a floral design for a club flower show.
 
         The present members of Great Meadows Garden Club have learned well from their predecessors.  Their flower shows display their artistic design  talents and are consistently earning superior awards.
 
         Today, as in prior years, club members plant and maintain gardens in various areas of the community and they contribute time and money to local charities.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We, the members of the Great Meadows Garden Club, invite you to click on the Link and come along on a virtual visit to the Great Meadows, the historic location for which our Club is named.

As the National Park Service states, "From the beginning of the French and Indian War through the heyday of the National Road, the Great Meadows lay along a corridor of history."
 
Described by Lieutenant Colonel George Washington, in his diary of 1754, as "a charming field for an Encounter," the Great Meadows became the site where he had Fort Necessity built and the ground where the Battle of the Great Meadows, 3 July 1754, the opening battle of the French and Indian War, was fought.  Since that time, the development of the grounds has come to also include the Mount Washington Tavern, a stagecoach inn that was built in 1828, on a hillside adjacent to the battlefield alongside The National Road.  Under the management of the National Park Service, the Great Meadows continues to be a lovely location of historic national significance.
 
As the namesake of the Great Meadows, the Great Meadows Garden Club has welcomed numerous and varied opportunities to provide beautification, decoration and supportive presence to the grounds and Mount Washington Tavern.  In recent years the opportunities have included planting lilacs on the grounds, decorating Mount Washington Tavern for holiday festivities as well as donning time-period apparel and  providing hostess and tour guide services.  It is always a delight!