The GCA Awards Grant for Tornado-damaged Wegerzyn Gardens

August 11, 2020

Restoration Initiative funds go to Garden Club of Dayton

Click here to download the press release as a Word document.

Mother Nature delivered a devastating punch to Ohio’s Wegerzyn Gardens MetroPark via an EF4 tornado nearly a year ago. To facilitate the removal of hundreds of destroyed trees and to prepare the area for replanting this fall, The Garden Club of America has awarded a $10,000 Restoration Initiative grant to the Garden Club of Dayton (GCD), a vital partner to Wegerzyn Gardens since the mid-1960s.

The GCA grant targets the restoration of the Marie Aull Nature Trail, funded and planted by the GCD as a wildflower garden in 1981. Later designated a one-mile nature trail, it was named to honor Marie Aull, a GCD member and recipient of the GCA Margaret Douglas Medal for conservation education in 1964. Aull (1897-2002) was considered the godmother of the environmental movement in southwestern Ohio.

Thirty-five of the 300 native trees to be planted in October during Wegerzyn Gardens’ community planting day are among 150 trees the GCD has tended, pruned, mulched, and nurtured over the past five years for the city of Dayton. “The city provides the trees, we take care of them, and when they are appropriately grown, the city buys them back from us,” said the GCD president. Club members will join other volunteers in planting the trees, which include Red Oak, Buckeye, Shumard, Hazelnut, PawPaw, Redbud, and Shagbark and Butternut Hickories.

The GCA established the Restoration Initiative in 2017 in response to the urgent needs caused by catastrophic storms, hurricanes, floods, fires, and mudslides to assist member clubs involved in public landscape restoration and conservation projects. Eight grants, totaling $80,000, have been awarded to clubs in Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas. 

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