Cultura Garden Club celebrates National Garden Week

Each year, garden clubs across America celebrate National Garden Week the first week of June.  This year, National Garden Week was observed June 2-8. The theme was “Knowledge is Flower.”

Cultura Garden Club participated by making a display at the Russellville Public Library that will be enjoyed throughout the month of June. Members also planted flowers in the pots outside the library to commemorate this celebration and to serve our community.

National Garden Week was founded in the early 1980s when a bill came up in the U.S. Congress.  The National Garden Clubs, Inc. petitioned the event, and by 1986, the week was proclaimed by United States president Ronald Reagan, and the first official National Garden Week took place the following year.

The National Garden Clubs, Inc. – a nonprofit organization headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, – spearheaded National Garden Week to promote the love of gardening, floral design and civic and environmental responsibility.

The day is about bringing more awareness to the importance of gardening and preserving gardening traditions and practices by passing on knowledge to new gardeners. Most importantly, the day is about simply enjoying gardening.

Some garden club activities include maintaining gardens in towns; beautifying downtown with flower baskets and pots; organizing garden tours; planning and implementing plant sales; donating books to libraries; hosting a flower show or garden party; arranging flowers for Meals on Wheels, sponsoring community education programs; promoting the cultivation of seeds; helping others in the community with landscape restoration after summer floods; donating vegetables to local residents who are experiencing food shortage; and more.

Letting more people know about National Garden Week is important, but gardening throughout the year encourages people of all ages to spend time in the garden, whether their own, a family member’s or a community garden.