Leesburg Garden Club

March 22, 2022

leesburggardenclub.org

1996-2015

For decades, Leesburg has participated in the GCV Daffodil, Lily and Rose Shows; the Upperville Daffodil Show; and the Middleburg Greens Show, winning multiple horticulture and artistic design ribbons — including best-in-show. The club has also received awards at the Philadelphia Flower Show and the North American Lily Society International Lily Show.

The club has contributed gardening books, antique volumes, funds and volunteer hours to the Oatlands Garden Library; as well as funds and volunteer hours to the Marshall Center.

GCV Horticulture Field Day was held in Loudoun County in 1998 where gardens south of Leesburg — Little Oatlands and Oatlands among others – were featured. A catered luncheon was served on the grounds of Oatlands and the glorious weather brought record attendance.

Leesburg area gardens were again featured during 2008 Horticulture Field Day View photos

Leesburg Garden Club was asked by the county in 1997 to review landscaping plans for the new county administration building. In 2002, the club was asked by the town to review landscaping plans for the new courthouse, after which Leesburg member Betsey Brown was asked to serve on the courthouse Grounds and Facilities Task Force and its Arts Advisory Panel. The club was also asked to study the landscaping plans for the Market Street Post Office and the Catoctin Circle Loudoun Rescue Squad.

In 1997, Leesburg members Maureen Mercker and June Hambrick began efforts to convince the town to hang large floral baskets from the streetlight poles in the four-block intersection of Market Street and King, the center of town. After multiple meetings with the mayor, the zoning coordinator and Dominion Virginia Power, and a few donations from Leesburg Garden Club, their efforts were successful and the baskets were hung. The town continues to plant, water and maintain the baskets each year.

The Leesburg Garden Club became a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization in 1999 and has continued its civic work in order to maintain that status.

The club hosted the GCV Daffodil Show in 2002, Water, Water, Everywhere, and 2003, Give My Regards to Broadway, at Carradoc Hall, chaired by Emma Kelly.

The club nominated William H. Harrison, recipient of the 2005 Elizabeth Cabell Dugdale Award for Meritorious Achievement in Conservation. Mr. Harrison led the establishment of the Loudoun County Heritage Farm Museum.

The club hosted the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Garden Club of Virginia at Belmont Country Club, chaired by Jill Beach and Kate Williams. Attendees boarded trolleys Tuesday evening from Lansdowne Resort for a Dutch treat dinner at Murray Hill, the lovely home of Peggy and John Rust. The glorious evening on the Potomac was highlighted by delicious Italian cuisine, Italian opera, along with a memorable thunderstorm. Wednesday morning tours included a visit to Oatlands Plantation and its spectacular gardens or a self-guided walking tour of the historic town. Lunch followed at Belmont Country Club’s Lee Mansion where Directors at Large met with presidents from their districts. The awards banquet was held Wednesday night in the Grand Ballroom at Belmont Country Club.

 View 2014 Annual Meeting photos

When COVID-19 prevented the 2020 statewide meeting of the Board of Governors, Leesburg member Suzi Worsham hosted the District V BOG meeting at her historic home, “Riverside, on the Potomac.”

Leesburg Garden Club was awarded the 1982 GCV Common Wealth Award for landscaping at Douglass Community Center and Park. Since that time, the club has remained involved with the project, and has added hundreds of daffodil bulbs, completed a large flagstone patio and installed a plaque at the south end of the park.

2015 – 2020

The club continues its decades long tradition of gathering in December to create wreaths, swags and other decorative greens to hang on Leesburg’s unique swinging courthouse yard gates and the doors of Thomas Balch Library. Members also donate greens and work individually to make wreaths for the downtown post office, the G.C. Marshall International Center and the county courthouse.

In celebration of its centennial in 2015, Leesburg Garden Club embarked on an ambitious project to create Leesburg’s “Native Tree Walk.” The club planted 32 Virginia native trees at Ida Lee Park on the path adjacent to Old Waterford Road, west of Rust Library. Each tree is labeled with an ID placard that provides interactive descriptive information and benefits. The club received the Environmental Award from the Town of Leesburg in 2016 for the project.

The club had held two day-long symposia: “A Day with Holly Heider Chapple” in 2016 and “Fall Into Entertaining” with Jane Godshalk in 2018. The symposia not only provided educational opportunities to the public about floral design and the floral market, but also raised $42,000 for the club’s community grants program. The club awarded Oatlands an $11,000 grant in 2018 to fund an irrigation system in the five-acre formal garden, with Oatlands contributing $15,000 toward the $26,000 project.

In April of 2019 the club held a Sunday Brunch fund-raiser at historic Selma Mansion and raised over $7,000 for its Loudoun County Childrens Education Fund.

The club continues its long tradition of providing annual scholarships for students to attend Nature Camp and a $1,000 scholarship for a graduating high school senior who plans to study in horticultural or environmental fields. Recent recipients of community grants include the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy in June of 2020 and Lucketts Elementary School and Tuscarora High School in 2021.

With the 2020 arrival of COVID-19, club members immediately transitioned to Zoom meetings, hosting virtual speakers and sharing professional videos of local and internationally recognized gardens, among others.

In honor of the Garden Club of Virginia’s Centennial, the club planted daffodils at Oatlands Historic House and Gardens, Leesburg Elementary School and the George C. Marshall International Center, each with an engraved stone marker commemorating GCV’s 100th Anniversary. The club designed exhibits for two display cases at Thomas Balch Library that told the history of the Leesburg Garden Club and its long affiliation with the Garden Club of Virginia. See photos

Leesburg Garden Club and Fauquier and Loudoun Garden Club have alternated Historic Garden Week tour years for decades, with Leesburg hosting in odd years. When 2020 HGW tours were canceled and Fauquier and Loudoun was unable to host its tour in April, Leesburg members agreed to move their regularly scheduled 2021 tour to 2022, allowing Fauquier and Loudoun to take advantage of Bunny Mellon’s Oak Spring gardens in 2021.

Leesburg Garden Club members have served in numerous GCV state-level capacities: committee members, committee chairmen and Board members; handbook editors and generous donors. Recent Horticulture Award of Merit recipients include Eeda Dennis, 1998; Kassie Kingsley, 2003; and Ellie Daley, 2006. Members have served on the Loudoun County Preservation & Conservation Committee and have contributed to the efforts of the Loudoun County Zoning Ordinance Rewrite Committee to preserve the 1940’s signature legislation that prohibits billboards in Loudoun. The legislation was initiated by Vinton Pickens, a club member, as the first chairman of the then new Planning Commission.

The Leesburg Garden Club has decades of historical materials professionally archived and stored in temperature-controlled rooms in the Thomas Balch Library.

Historical Sketch, Sources and Notes

LGC Presidents 1996-2020

1996-1998	Betsey Brown
1998-1999	Pat Devine
1999-2002	Jean Brown
2002-2004	Nan Forbes
2004-2006	Kassie Kingsley
2006-2008	Cecelia Mahan
2008-2010	Carole Maloney
2010-2012	Kate Williams
2012-2014	Gladys Lewis
2014-2016	June Hambrick
2016-2018	Dianna Price
2018-2020	Susan Honig Rogers