Roanoke Valley Garden Club

March 21, 2022

www.roanokevalleygc.org

Community Involvement

For over a century, Roanoke Valley Garden Club has enriched its surrounding communities with projects to preserve the beauty, history, and the cultural and environmental sustainability of the area.

The club’s signature project has beautified and maintained the railyard beds at the Virginia Museum of Transportation since the 1970s. As the museum relocated several times over the years, members diligently followed and relocated benches, urns, and earlier plantings. By 1985, the museum was firmly established in Wasena Park in an old Norfolk & Western freight depot. The club had established a beautiful garden at that location by moving 200 boxwoods from its previous location. The garden featured the transplanted boxwoods, arranged in four circles, repeating the pattern of the wheels of the #6ll steam engine parked behind the garden. The center of each “wheel” was planted with 150 red tulips – a spectacular spring display! Marigolds, ageratum, geraniums, scarlet sage, and chrysanthemums extended the bloom throughout the summer and fall. Club members lovingly attended the museum’s Wasena Park garden for years and applied for Common Wealth Award funding to add paths throughout the garden.

“The club had just received the $500 (Common Wealth Award) check to build paths throughout the garden when the flood of ’85 struck! The museum building was half submerged in river water; the boxwood circles, totally. Machines in the park, including steam engines, were washed askew or down the river. Only a few tips of scarlet sage could be spotted bounding in the muddy waters. Subsequently, remaining exhibits were moved out of the floodplain to a warehouse which required none of the proposed paths. The Common Wealth Award was returned (to the Common Wealth Award Committee). And then, happy days! The committee sent the check back to be used in establishing gardens in planters at the museum’s new site. Again, members moved boxwood salvaged from the flood and thereby proved the durability of the plants and of the club’s members.”

~ Follow the Green Arrow II

Following the flood, the museum moved to its current location at the former Norfolk & Western Railway Freight Station in April 1986 and RVGC managed to include the salvaged benches, urns, and boxwoods in the new location’s garden. In the early 1990s, the museum began to expand its collection and its quarters, overtaking the club’s latest plantings. Undeterred, RVGC members again moved benches, urns, and boxwoods.

Since that time, the club has funded, designed, planted, maintained, refreshed, redesigned, and expanded plantings in the gardens and landscape surrounding the museum. In 2016, the club planted nine trees approaching the museum in an industrial area gradually being revitalized. A recent club project included the addition of rain barrels to the gardens, which were then decorated by art contest award recipients from Garden City Elementary School.

Note: The museum’s complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

Other community projects have included funding, tree plantings (dogwood, maple, oak, and evergreen), and educational support for Habitat for Humanity projects; creation of a pollinator-friendly garden at Raleigh Court Elementary School; installation of a green roof at the Mill Mountain Zoo; support for the Ronald McDonald House; funding for tree plantings throughout Roanoke; and support for veterans at the Salem Veterans Affairs Center.

Fundraising Projects

RVGC holds two primary fundraising projects annually to support its community projects. “Plant and Pantry” is an annual spring sale and auction for club members only and offers such items as plants, foods, gifts, and garden and flower-arranging accessories.

“Holiday House” fundraiser, in partnership with Mill Mountain Garden Club, is an annual sale of holiday-related items that is open to the public. Funds benefit the Roanoke Council of Garden Clubs, a valley-wide association of garden clubs of which RVGC is the largest club and the largest contributor.

RVGA has very successfully hosted events by internationally known floral designers with ticket sale proceeds contributing to the club’s community efforts.

Club Programs and Activities

RVGC programs have provided members with educational opportunities ranging from miniature floral designs to nuclear energy discussions. Members have energized their artistic floral endeavors by using a variety of design styles in creating holiday centerpieces, participating in challenge class competitions among members, and learning how to interpret themes such as “Country Music Showdown” and “An Autumn World Tour.”

Members have created terraria. They have learned about growing and showing lilies and daffodils, composting and soil development, herbs, bluebirds and their habitats, Blue Ridge Parkway tree plantings, green rooftops, GCV restoration projects, fellow GCV club projects, and growing and preserving lavender.

Conservation

Members attend GCV Legislative Day each January to learn about upcoming bills that impact Virginia communities and to meet with legislators to discuss ways to protect the resources and the beauty of Virginia. Members also attend the GCV Conservation Forum each year to hear in-depth conversations about specific topics of interest to Virginia’s environmental concerns. RVGC and many of its individual members contribute regularly to Scenic Virginia and the Blue Ridge Environmental Council.

RVGC is particularly interested in the creation and protection of the city’s green spaces and its policies regarding the city’s tree canopy, billboards, signs, and zoning; Mill Mountain sustainability; land conservation trusts; and the Roanoke River.

2011 Annual Meeting of the Garden Club of Virginia

The 91st Annual Meeting of the Garden Club of Virginia was hosted by Roanoke Valley Garden Club on May 11-12, 2011, at the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center, chaired by Denise Revercomb and Julie Perry.

Attendees were hosted by Kelly and Russell Ellis for a Dutch treat dinner at their lovely home Tuesday night.

GCV President Kim Nash called the meeting to order at the Hotel Roanoke on Wednesday afternoon, May 10. She thanked Roanoke Valley Garden Club members under the leadership of their President Becky Austin and Annual Meeting Co-Chairmen Julie Perry and Denise Revercomb. She complimented them on the wonderful morning tour of the Taubman Museum of Art and Historic Roanoke City Market, and a tour and lunch at the O. Winston Link Museum of Transportation. The awards banquet was held Wednesday night in the hotel’s ballroom.

Photos

RVGC Presidents 1996-2020

1996-1998	Joyce Rice
1998-2000	Mary Ann Johnson
2000-2002	Mary Meade Winn
2002-2004	Amarillis Childress
2004-2006	Denise Revercomb
2006-2008	Linda Steadman
2008-2010	Katherine Knopf
2010-2012	Becky Austin
2012-2014	Kelly Ellis
2014-2016	Eileen Dickey
2016-2018	Paula Irons
2018-2020	Joanne Callis