Centennial Tree Project Continues to Thrive Ten Years Later

February 21, 2024

Projects in Texas and Tennessee still going strong
Jenne Williams, Member of the Communications Committee

In 2013, The Garden Club of America celebrated its centennial in numerous ways to promote horticultural knowledge and sustainability to members and the public. The GCA Horticulture Committee’s Centennial Tree Project aimed to preserve the past while growing the future. This resulted in more than 22,550 trees being planted around the country. Projects often required creativity, extensive research, and restoration of historical sites—a fitting celebration for the GCA’s Centennial year.

Fast-forward over ten years and you’ll find that many of these projects continue to make a difference in their communities. Here are two examples from GCA clubs in Texas and Tennessee. 

River Oaks Garden Club members thoughtfully rescued seedlings and propagated native Texas trees following the devastating drought in 2011 which caused the loss of 66 million trees in Houston’s surrounding counties. Their efforts inspired the 2013 centennial project “Got Seedlings?” which allowed long-time members to teach provisional members how to continue propagating seedlings and grow seasonal plants in the Bayou Bend Gardens greenhouse. The project continues today thereby freeing maintenance funds for other important projects in the Gardens.

The Knoxville Garden Club (KGC) commemorated the GCA’s centennial by providing needed signage along the designated KGC Arboretum Trail in the Ijams Nature Center as well as planting a seedling grown from a gifted Centennial Oak acorn of the Quercus bicolor, the swamp white oak, from Central Park, NYC. The signs continue to educate visitors and the oak now stands 15 feet tall! 

Over a decade later, the GCA’s Centennial Tree Project is still going strong.  

 

 

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