History of the Founding of the Garden Club of Hartford
The Eight Charter Members
Present at the Founding Meeting
March 16, 1916
By Nora O. Howard, March 25, 2016
Mrs. Robert Watkinson Gray – Co-Founder
Member 1916-1969
54 Huntington St. Hartford
It was Mary Kremer Gray’s (1881-1969) idea to have a garden club. She wrote later that “in the early spring, having nothing better to do, I set down and wrote a little constitution for a garden club – at the time I had in my back yard a long rose bed and three peonies. I wording this constitution I drew quite freely on the constitution of the Thursday club. I remember that in one of the articles of this tentative constitution of the Hartford Garden Club, men were to be eligible for memberships – perhaps not full membership, but if they assisted their wives in carting water or lifting heavy plants they could become associate members.
“Armed with these suggestions, I went to see my friend, Mrs. Samuel O. Prentice, who lived on the corner of Niles and Gillett Streets. Mrs. Prentice had a real garden and knew the Latin name of all her plants. ‘Let’s have a garden club,’ I said genially with the confidence of sublime ignorance. ‘You be the president and I will be the secretary and write all the notes. Here is a little constitution that I have drawn up, and next week we can have a meeting.’ It was just like that.”
“We had our first meeting very soon at the home of Mrs. Prentice with eight original members present, and Mrs. Wistar Morris to advise us against various pitfalls. ‘Keep the club small,’ she urged, ‘and do not have any dead wood.’ Alas, for the men! It was voted, after some discussion, not to have them”
Mrs. Gray was the club’s first treasurer. She was the club’s second president, when the Garden Club of Hartford joined the Garden Club of America (1919). She was club delegate to the 1929 garden pilgrimage of the English Speaking Union. In 1932, Mrs. Gray reported for the State Billboard Committee that more than 2,000 “wayside signs” had been removed, and 695 fields cleaned up during the year.
Mary Kremer grew up in New York City. She married Robert Gray (1876-1945) in 1904, carrying a bouquet of lilies of the valley. Mr. Gray was president of Gray & Prior Machine Company. The Hartford Courant featured her garden in its June 12, 1927 article on the Spring gardens of club members.
She wrote poetry about nature, friends, and the seaside, which she collected into two books, Selected Poems (Hartford: 1936) and Spring Tide (Hartford: Press of Meyer & Noll, 1941). Both books are at the Connecticut Historical Society. Mary Gray is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery.
NOTES:
Another version of the GCH founding story describes what inspired Mrs. Gray: roses and peonies were the inspiration for the club. “Mrs. Gray told how one spring afternoon about twenty-three years ago she sat in her living room looking out on the rose bed and the three peonies which graced her back yard, she conceived the idea of the Garden Club. She drew up a tentative constitution….” [This is very close to Mrs. Gray’s reminiscence on page 94 of the 90th booklet.” January 1939 reminiscence by Mrs. Gray was found in a short c. 1970s typed history of the club inserted into a Program Book.]
Mrs. Wistar Morris was Alice Fenwick Goodwin Morris, daughter of Rev. Francis Goodwin – who was Commissioner of the Hartford Parks Commission. Rev. Goodwin convinced his friends Charles Pond and Henry Keney to donate their estates for parks. Mr. Morris was a famous architect and they lived in NYC.
The Thursday Club, founded in 1883, met weekly and had thirty women as members. Several men were honorary members, including Charles Dudley Warner, a writer and friend of Mark Twain. The club had debates, readings, discussions and essays by the women on a wide variety of topics. The club was still in operation in 1979.
Mrs. Samuel O. Prentice – Co-Founder
Member 1916-1924
70 Gillette Street, Hartford (demolished)
On March 16, 1916, eight women met at Anne Prentice’s home to organize the club, adopt a constitution, elect officers, and do other business. Five of these charter members lived in Hartford, and three in West Hartford. The day was cloudy and cold. Club dues were $2, and Mrs. Prentice was the first president.
A month later, on April 11, 1916, the club held its next meeting and elected six more members. The vote was to include only “women who work personally” in their gardens. The minutes of the first meeting, April 11, 1916, said it was “a meeting which was full of inspiration.”
Anne Combe Post Prentice (1864-July 1, 1924) was born in New Jersey, and married in 1901. Her husband, the Honorable Samuel Oscar Prentice (1850-1924) graduated from Yale in 1873. He was Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court from 1913-1920, and helped write the garden club’s first constitution. Judge Prentice was also president of Watkinson Library and the Hartford Public Library Association.
Anne Prentice was the club’s first president from 1916-1919. Mary Gray said that her club co-founder, “had a real garden and knew the Latin name of all her plants.”
Mrs. Prentice was president of the Union for Home Work (1910-1924). Upon her death, its superintendent, Mrs. William A. Ayres, said that Mrs. Prentice was a very remarkable woman. “She took a broad view of life in all its aspects…. She was a woman of strong impulses for good, and a very firm character, always standing for the right. She delighted in doing good, was thoughtful in caring for others, and never spared herself when she could be of assistance to those in need of help of any kind. She had…a gentle spirit.”
Mrs. Prentice was on the boards of the Hartford Orphan Asylum and The Visiting Nurse Association. She was a member of The Colonial Dames of America, the golf clubs of Fenwick and Hartford, The Art Society of Hartford, and The Hartford Music Club.
In 1920 she was appointed vice-chairman of the Republican State Committee. She subsequently served that position as an elected official and served in two victorious state political campaigns. In 1924 she was a Delegate-at-Large for the Republican National Convention (but could not attend the Cleveland convention).
Anne Prentice’s funeral was at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church. Her husband’s will directed gifts to Hartford: a free bed endowment at Hartford Hospital (if the bed was unoccupied, the Asylum Hill Congregational Church could designate someone for it); genealogical books and local histories to the Watkinson Library; and books to the Hartford Public Library.
[Republican State Committee details in Mrs. Prentice’s obituary, Hartford Courant online, July 2,1924.]
Mrs. James Parkhill Andrews
Member 1916-1939; Honorary 1940-1969
1055 Prospect Avenue, W. Hartford
Julia L. Andrews (1869-1969) was born in Chicago. Her husband was a Supreme Court of Connecticut Reporter. She was widowed c. 1936 and then lived at 843 Prospect Avenue in Hartford.
Mrs. Andrews helped plant at the Webb House and Newington Home for Crippled Children. She was on the billboard committee (1920s), and club vice president (1924). As club president (1927-1929), she attended the GCA Annual Meeting in Rye, NY. On June 12, 1927, the Hartford Courant included her garden in an article about the club members’ gardens. She wrote the 25th Anniversary Club History.
During World War I, she belonged to the Hartford Committee to support Belgian Relief Work. Her letter to the Hartford Courant (January 10, 1915) described visiting New York City’s American Headquarters for Belgian Relief. Another letter to the Courant (June 28, 1922) supported the Committee on Americanization and adult education.
In another letter to the Hartford Courant (December 19, 1944), she urged that the “Old Burying Ground Should Be Regarded as a Memorial.” “As citizens of Hartford, we have before us a rare opportunity. At a comparatively small cost, we may restore to our city an historic piece of ground, and in so doing we shall not only add greatly to the dignity and beauty of the heart of the city but also create a memorial to the founders of Connecticut who lie buried in that soil. But the time for decision is now; and unless we act promptly, another chance to preserve a priceless landmark will have passed….”
Julia Andrews was the first chairman of Wethersfield’s Webb House Museum; most likely she strongly advised the Colonial Dames of Connecticut to purchase the house (1919). She was president of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America (1927-1935), president of the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society (1942-1945), and its Honorary Trustee (1961-1969). Mrs. Andrews was a Charter Member of The Town & County Club, and president (1939-1942), and a donor to The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving’s “Legacy Society.”
Mrs. Andrews moved to California c. 1948, and at her death she was residing at a Hartford convalescent home at 80 Wethersfield Avenue. At her death she left only a cousin. Her funeral was at Christ Church Cathedral, and she is buried in the Old North Cemetery in Hartford.
Miss Frances Antoinette Beach
Member 1916-1933
Vine Hill, 416 South Main Street, West Hartford
Frances Beach (April 11, 1852 – February 4, 1937) was born in Hartford, and lived at the family home, Vine Hill. She shared it with her siblings, Charles, Edward, Edith and Mary Elizabeth. Vine Hill is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Miss Beach hosted the Garden Club of Hartford’s first regular meeting at Vine Hill. Thereafter, it was the popular site of club meetings, teas, and the 1917 Strawberry Breakfast.
Miss Beach was the most senior woman at the inaugural meeting in 1916, at age 64. She loved opening Vine Hill and its garden and farm to the club and community. Frances Beach’s father, Charles Mason Beach, established it as one of the largest dairy and sheep farms in the state. He was a founder of the American Jersey Cattle Club and the American Guernsey Cattle Club, and a Hartford Steam Boiler director.
Frances’ garden club friend, Julia Andrews, described Vine Hill in the club history of 1925. “Vine Hill had a special quality which the young of today will never know, for already it was of another time; the vast flower-border harboring almost every plant hardy in the vicinity, the greenhouses with their exotics, the famous strawberries, the house with its inheritance of generations, and Miss Beach herself, detached but aware, kind and wise as a force of nature.”
Frances Beach was active in all aspects of the club; her club lectures included “Palms and Color in the Autumn-Winter Garden.” She worked with Mrs. Gray on civic plantings at the Connecticut Institute for the Blind, which the club minutes of 1918-1919 said were “heroic labors.” She was among a group of club members whose entry won the second prize at the Wadsworth Atheneum’s Flower Show (1929), for hardy borders, In 1930, the club visited Vine Hill to see hundreds of blooming Candidum lilies.
Her book collection included gardens and horticulture,. Her brother inherited her books, and in 1948, the family’s Victorian doll house was given to the Children’s Museum with over 200 dolls from all over the world. The dolls had been displayed on a bookcase in the Vine Hill living room.
Mary Gray wrote a letter to The Hartford Courant in 1937: “The death of Miss Frances Beach is not only a loss to her wide circle of friends but also to all those who are interested in horticulture. Her garden was a delight and an inspiration. From early spring till late fall it presented a series of pictures created by an artist’s hand. Here were the long sweeps of color that one sees in English gardens; at Vine Hill one felt as one does when viewing the famous borders at Hampton Court. Miss Beach knew her flowers intimately, their names and their habits, and she was as much at home in the greenhouse as out of doors. The writer has been privileged to see many famous gardens both here and abroad. The garden at Vine Hill, the work of a true gardener, is worthy of a place among the best.” Miss Beach is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery.
Interesting Notes about Vine Hill, the home and garden of the first regular GCH Meeting
In June, 1914, Frances’ brother Charles Edward Beach held the first annual outing of the West Hartford Business Men’s Association in Vine Hill Farm’s grove. Said the Hartford Courant, “the party was favored with a fine view of the Charter Oak Park flights by Benchey…. Refreshments were enjoyed and a baseball game composed of two picked teams was played. It has been decided to hold these outings annually.” [Hartford Courant online, June 22, 1914]
On October 12, 1918, Frances’ sister Edith, chairman of the W. Hartford Women’s Liberty Loan Committee, had a fair at Vine Hill. The event resembled a French street market. Her committee on artistic arrangements was chaired by Inez Temple [who designed what the Garden Club of Hartford used as its 90th Birthday booklet cover in 2006]. There were booths with French baskets and toys, books, doll house on exhibit; the event had patriotic organizations, religious organizations, and articles solicited from community for the fair. [Hartford Courant online, October 4, 1918]
[Mary Gray’s description of Miss Beach and the garden in The Hartford Courant online, February 13, 1937. Dolls in The Hartford Courant online, July 23, 1948.]
Mrs. John Halsey Buck
Member, 1916-1943
17 Atwood Road, Hartford
Edith Albin Buck (1883-1943) was the Club’s first recording secretary, and the youngest Charter Member at about age 33, and the club’s first recording secretary. She was on the Bill Boards and Conservation Committee from 1923-1935 and perhaps longer. In 1925, she was chosen by the Garden Club of America to chair the eastern zone of the Billboards and Roadside Committee. This was a great honor, as at this time there were only two chairs, with the other being the western zone chair.
In 1929, Mrs. Buck addressed a women’s group in New Jersey that sought to restrict billboards. She spoke of the Connecticut law enacted in 1925 which levied a tax of 3 cents per square foot on billboards, and she described how billboards had been noticeably reduced in Connecticut
The Hartford Courant said in 1925 that “the committee already has accomplished a great deal, and is carrying forward a large task the importance of which is realized by every lover of beauty.”
Mrs. Buck was originally from Concord, New Hampshire, and she completed two years of college. She belonged to the Woman’s Saturday Afternoon Club.
Edith’s husband, John Halsey Buck (1869-1957), was a lawyer, and the son of Congressman John R. Buck. He held civic and business posts, and was president of the Twentieth Century Club. Mr. Buck was on the board for fifty years of the ‘Deaf and Dumb Institute.’ He invited the Garden Club of Hartford to plant 200 bulbs and evergreens on the Institute’s property, and this was the club’s civic project. The bulbs were donated by Miss Dennis and Miss Beach. At John Buck’s death, he was a senior member of law firm of Buck, McCook, and Kenyon.
The Buck’s garden was included in a Hartford Courant article in 1927 on spring gardens of the club members. Edith Buck was active in flower arranging, and 1932 minutes praised her “flower arrangements of infinite variety.” In the 1939 club history, she wrote that the club’s members had “many interests and responsibilities,” and that they considered “The Garden Club of Hartford as a wholesome relaxation.”
The Buck’s also owned a home in Glastonbury called “Wassuc.”
[Home address in 1920, 1930, and 1940 Census; billboards in Hartford Courant online, January 29, 1929; lover of beauty in Hartford Courant online, May 24, 1925; spring gardens in Hartford Courant online, June 12, 1927. Saturday Afternoon Club in Hartford Courant online, April 13, 1930; Club history of 1939 in 90th Birthday book, p. 94.]
Mrs. Albert S. Cook
Member 1916-1938
44 Sycamore Road, West Hartford
Charlotte B. Cook (born in 1869) was the club’s vice president in 1916. In 1911, she was among the six charter members who signed a petition against suffrage. It was also signed by Mrs. James P. Andrews, Mrs. Samuel O. Prentice, Mrs. Robert W. Huntington, Miss Bertha P. Dennis, and Mrs. John H. Buck:
“We, the undersigned women citizens of the State of Connecticut, do hereby petition the Assembly of our state not to pass the woman’s municipal suffrage bill which will come before it. In spite of the demands of a few insistent women, the large majority of women in this state have not asked for and do not wish any further extension of suffrage, and the attendant burdens which it would force upon them.”
By 1913, Charlotte Cooke had a car registered in her name. Her husband Albert Cook was president of Asa S. Cook Co. In May, 1928, reported the Hartford Courant, the Cook’s returned from spending the winter abroad, and went to Washington, Connecticut for a month.
[Petition in Hartford Courant online, June 1, 1911, p. 6.]
Miss Bertha Parker Dennis
Member 1916-1930; honorary c. 1939-1946
210 Washington Street, Hartford
Bertha Dennis (January 10, 1867 – November 14, 1946) took part in many club activities – awards, horticulture, membership, and planting at the Newington Hospital grounds. She was a life member of the Connecticut Humane Society.
The Hartford Municipal Register for 1900 recorded that Bertha Dennis lived on Washington Street with Rodney Dennis, Grace Dennis Cutler, and Charlotte W.D. Little. The Cutler name would reappear in the GCH membership rolls.
Miss Dennis’ garden on Washington Street, reported the Hartford Times on July 8, 1916, was “mellow,” “age- ripened” and “one of the oldest in the vicinity.”
Miss Dennis later resided in Hartford at 84 Forest Street and at 50 Forest Street. Miss Dennis had a summer home in South Lyme. In 1921, she and several others donated Javanese marionettes to the Wadsworth Atheneum to use in shadow plays. Bertha Dennis is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery.
[Home address in 1930 census/#30, and 1940 census/#50; South Lyme in Hartford Courant online, July 20, 1917; marionettes in Hartford Courant online, February 25, 1921.]
Mrs. Robert W. Huntington, Jr.
Member, 1916-1965
145 Bloomfield Avenue, Hartford
Constance Alton Willard Huntington (c. 1881 – November, 1965) was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1903. In 1906 she married Robert Huntington, who became president of Connecticut General Life Insurance Co.
In the 1920s, Mrs. Huntington was chair of the Garden Club of Hartford’s Wildflower Committee. In 1932 the committee successfully stopped the City of Hartford from using ropes of Laurel as Christmas decorations. In 1926, she attended the GCA Annual Meeting in California. She won first prizes at the Connecticut Horticultural Society Flower Show (1930), was club president (1939-1941) and was the fourth recipient of the club’s Josephine H. Maxim silver Oak Leaf Award (1940).
At the club’s 25th anniversary celebration, held May 22, 1941 at the Town & County Club, there were silver baskets of white flowers decorating the table. At one end sat Mrs. Huntington, surrounded by ex-presidents, who were presented with halos – a tribute to having survived the strenuous life of being a garden club president. The halos were ‘properly adjusted at the most becoming angles,’ noted a club history. Entertainment included skits, poems, stories, songs.
Mrs. Huntington was a trustee of Radcliffe College, a trustee of Bushnell Memorial Hall, and a founder of the Oxford School for girls. In 1931-1939, she was on the Garden Club of America’s Board of Editors. Trinity Episcopal Church’s Huntington Hall, on Sigourney Street in Hartford, was Mrs. Huntington’s gift in memory of her husband. Their son, Trumbull Huntington, youngest of their six children, established Huntington’s Bookstore in Hartford, Middletown, West Hartford.
In 1955, she reviewed the House and Garden’s New Complete Book of Gardens for the Hartford Courant.
Our garden work done, Mr. Wright tells us to use this volume before an afternoon nap. Neither bedroom nor flower bed seems its best habitat, but the desk or table, where sitting with it pages open before us, we may travel from Texas to California, and back again via Miami to Cape Cod. One can spend hours at this flower show without aching feet or the need of any wheel chair.
What I miss in this picture book is reality. The stage is set but it is deserted. The outdoor world has no people about. Surely all the gardeners and laborers could not have put up their shovels and gone home? Where are the guests for the empty chairs set around overloaded tables on lonesome terraces? …The camera in these clever hands today has almost brought the garden into the house and to the shut-in. Neither book nor picture are any substitute to a flower lover out in the weather, trowel in hand, knees in the soil and a rose bush of his own raising, near his nose.
Constance Huntington is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery.
[Hartford Courant online has marriage (May 7, 1906), book review, (October 30, 1955), and obituary (November 20, 1965. Also GCH 90th Birthday book, p. 58.]
ADDITIONAL MEMBERS in 1916
Elected April 11, 1916
(about one month after the first meeting, March 16)
Sara Ballard (Mrs. Eugene Ballard of Hartford; member, 1916-1971)
Miss Virginia F. Browne (of Hartford; member, 1916-1964)
Cordel Glazier (Mrs. Charles M. Glazier of Hartford; member, 1916-1947)
Edith Kingsbury (Mrs. Isaac W. Kingsbury of West Hartford; member 1916-1968)
First winner of Josephine H. Maxim Oak Leaf Award, in 1941
Era C. Root (Mrs. Edward K. Root of Hartford; member 1916-1946)
Louise Terry (Mrs. Edward C. Terry, of Hartford; member 1916-1947)
Members Elected later in 1916
Miss Mary C. Barton (of Hartford; member 1916-1921)
Harriet Enders (Mrs. John O. Enders of Hartford; member 1916-1963)
Emily H. Fenn (Mrs. J. Lincoln Fenn of Hartford; member 1916-1935)
Emma G. Ferguson (Rev. Henry Ferguson of Hartford; member 1916-1930)
Margaret Ferguson (Mrs. Samuel Ferguson of West Hartford; member 1916-1943)
Mrs. Robert Flagg (member 1916-1919)
Miss Ellen E. Flagg (of Hartford; member 1916-1938)
Miss Alice Foster (of Hartford; member 1916-1938)
Glass slides of her garden are in Archives of Am. Garden
Ruth Goodwin (Mrs. Charles A. Goodwin of Hartford; member 1916-1937)
Her husband’s father, Rev. Francis Goodwin, established a ring of parks around Hartford-Elizabeth Park, Keney Park (donated by her husband’s cousin, Henry Keney), Pope Park, Goodwin Park, Bushnell Park. totaled 1,000 acres.
Emily P. Knapp (Mrs. Howard Knapp of Hartford; member 1916-1934)
Miss Lucy O. Mather (of Hartford; member 1916-1920)
Miss Lucy Perkins (of Hartford; member 1916-c. 1919)
Elinor Robinson (Mrs. Lucius F. Robinson, Sr. of Hartford; member 1916-1956)
The first winner of the Silver Oak Leave Award, 1937. GCA ‘director 1933-1935
Maida Riggs (Mrs. Robert B. Riggs of Hartford; member 1916-1936)
Mary A.S. Thayer (Mrs. Charles Thayer of Hartford; member 1916-1931)
Miss Lucy Way (of Hartford; member 1916-1922)
Miss Emma A. Welcher (of Hartford, member 1916-1938)
Connecticut GCA Members and their Visiting Gardens
Pilgrimage to Japan, 1935
By Nora Howard, November 2016
Garden Club of Hartford, Chair, Garden History & Design
In 1935, the Garden Club of America sponsored a remarkable trip for members to Honolulu and Japan. The hope of the participants was to build friendships between Japan and the United States, and to bring Japanese garden design ideas back to the United States.
The GCA party included women traveling without their husbands, married couples, single women, and one single man. The group was in Honolulu, Hawaii on May 2, and their last day in Japan was May 26. There were no participants from Zone II’s two clubs in Rhode Island, but sixteen participants from Connecticut were aboard:
GCA President Mrs. Jonathan Bulkley Ridgefield Garden Club
GCA Treasurer Mrs. William Darrach Greenwich Garden Club
GCA Corresponding Secretary Mrs. Robert H. Fife Middletown Garden Club
GCA Director Mrs. Clarence B. Sturges Fairfield Garden Club
Mrs. Robert B. English Connecticut Valley Garden Club
Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin DeWitt Riegel Fairfield Garden Club
Mrs Yomeo Arai, Mrs. Elon H. Hooker,
Mr. and Mrs. William F. Mencken, Miss Jane Righter Greenwich Garden Club
Mrs. James Terry Garden Club of Hartford
Miss Myra Valentine, Miss Miriam D. Walker New Canaan Garden Club
Mrs. John Hampton Lynch Ridgefield Garden Club
The GCA Bulletin article in 1935 described the tour in heartfelt detail.
“It is hard to express to our hosts in Japan our deep appreciation of their unfailing hospitality, their generosity in sharing with us their treasures not often shared with visitors from afar, and their patience in answering innumerable questions. The Garden Club of America is aware of the unique opportunity afforded them.” (GCA Bulletin, September 1935. p. 56)
More recently, the GCA Bulletin of May 2014 summarized the trip in Exploring Distant Lands in the 1920s and 1930s by Anne R. Myers and Becky Stirn.
“In May 1935, ninety GCA members traveled to Honolulu and Japan, with an optional leg to China, on the M.S. Chichibu Maru. Led by GCA President Mrs. Jonathan Bulkley (Ridgefield GC) and incoming President Mrs. Robert Fife (Middletown GC), delegates came at the invitation of Princes Tokogawa and Konoye of Japan.” The participants were entertained in homes of prominent Japanese leaders. “Mrs. Yoneo Arai (Greenwich GC) inspired the unusual opening of famous Japanese gardens and sites never before seen by foreigners. The New York Times characterized this unusual royal treatment as ‘the most ambitious social experiment Japan has yet made in the cultivation of American friendship….’ An Osaka newspaper noted that the American Garden Party was ‘…one of the most liberal groups of spenders ever seen in Japan.’”
This article concluded that “The Garden Visit ‘experiment’ led to tours on almost every continent. The GCA’s original vision behind Garden Visits remains timeless: ‘…that through the love of gardens and beauty of nature, a greater understanding and friendship would follow.’ For nearly a century, GCA travelers have cherished the rich education and personal relationships nurtured by these explorations.”
The 1935 GCA Bulletin article concluded with a statement made by the new GCA president, Mrs. Robert Fife, on the eve of departure from Japan. “Before leaving Japan, I would like to express to Prince Tokugawa and to all the members of the General Committee of Reception for the Garden Club of America, and to all the dear people of Japan who have so generously entertained the members of our party on various occasions, the deep and sincere appreciation of the members of the Garden Club of America. On our arrival we were greeted with such a sincere welcome that we felt at home immediately. Not only has everyone been most kind, courteous, and delightfully hospitable, but everything that could be done for our care and comfort has been provided.
“We have learned to know and love your gardens. There is such a feeling of restfulness and repose in them. We in America need just such gardens in our lives, and I feel sure that there will come from this visit a new type of garden made by members of this group, not gardens absolutely like yours, but with some of the same quality and love of nature. We have also discovered the beauty of moss and stone…. We do thank you most deeply….” (GCA Bulletin, September 1935, pp. 56-57)
Three hundred copies of a commemorative book, Gardens of America, were printed. “This volume,” noted a brief introduction, “represents a greeting from some Garden Club members in America to their many kind friends in Japan. May it convey an expression of appreciation and an assurance of friendship, and keep alive the pleasant memories of 1935.” The book had 70 full-page photographs of the participants’ gardens, including the gardens of every Connecticut participant except for Mrs. Sturges and Miss Walker.
In GCA’s centennial history, author William Seale described the trip’s importance. “The grandest trip yet was that to Japan in 1935. While the Visiting Gardens Committee’s invitation was issued to all the clubs, the members in proximity to Manhattan were the best served. For the tour to Japan, the Japan Society in New York graciously consented to present weekly ‘evenings’ in the big drawing room at the Cosmopolitan Club. Those signed up as thinking about going on the trip paid a small fee and enjoyed cocktails, tea, perhaps some traditional Japanese cooking, and a lecture on gardens, costume, history, or Japanese social customs. The program was a big success and contributed to stretching the waiting list for the tour.
“The tour, which cost a thousand dollars per participant, began in Los Angeles. Max and Beatrix Farrand welcomed participants to the Huntington Library, where he was a director and she, although nominally retired, was involved with developing the library’s extensive gardens. Tour participants were also entertained by the Pasadena Garden Club, where the inspiration to help save the redwoods had first come to the GCA. From the port of Los Angeles the party of one hundred sailed to Honolulu for that year’s GCA annual meeting. Sailing on from there northwesterly to Japan they joined gracious Japanese hosts, who beguiled them with the loveliness of the gardens, houses, temples, and landscapes.”
Shoji Yamada, in Shots in the Dark: Japan, Zen and the West, wrote about the hope in the 1930s for friendship between Japan and the United States, and the role that gardens would play. “Beginning in the mid-1930s, when [Bruno] Taut [author of Houses and People of Japan] came to Japan, English language introductions to the gardens of Kyoto, including Ryoanji, became increasingly popular. There was a specific motivation for this. In 1935, 120 members of the Garden Club of America visited Japan and toured gardens all over the country. The group arrived in Yokohama on May 13, and beginning with a visit to Meiji shrine, the following day, they toured gardens in Tokyo, Nikko, Hakone, Nagoya, Kyoto, and Nara, until their departure from Japan on June 2. They visited Ryoanji on May 22.
“For the garden community in Japan,” wrote Shoji Yamada in 2009, “this inspection tour by the Garden Club of America was a major event. They must have had a lofty goal for the tour, hoping that the Americans would understand how wonderful Japanese gardens were and that this would open the road of friendship between Japan and the United States.”
The pilgrimage was a success, but the friendship between the two countries would not last. William Seale described one unexpected result that the trip of 1935. ”Six years later, the United States was at war with Japan. After Pearl Harbor, the Topographical Division of the War Department in Washington contacted the GCA travelers of 1935 to study the candid snapshots of places they had visited on that unforgettable voyage.”
(L)
Mrs. Jonathan Bulkley (Sarah Little Tod) (1870-1942) and her daughter, Sarah Tod Bulkley (Mrs. S.B. Randolph). 1907. Artist: Cecilia Beaux, American, 1855 – 1942. Yale University Art Gallery. Gift of Mrs. S. B. Randolph. Image: YUAG website.
(R) Sarah Gildersleeve Fife (1885-1949)
Image from findagrave.com
Bibliography and for Further Reading
Davison, Marion. A Report on the Visit of the Garden Club of America to Honolulu, Japan and China in the Spring of 1935. Millbrook Garden Club, 1936. Limited edition, 150 copies. Online at Abehbooks and at Rumon-Miller Books.
The Garden Club of America. The Garden Club of America Bulletin. Garden Club of America Pilgrimage to Honolulu and Japan, by Mrs. Clement S. Houghton (Zone I) and Mrs. Benjamin S. Warren (Zone X). September 1935. No. 16. pp. 2-57. Online at GCA website, with a complete list of GCA “Members Who Accepted the Invitation to Honolulu and Japan on pages 58-59.
The Garden Club of America. The Garden Club of American Bulletin. Exploring Distant Lands in the 1920s and 1930s, by Anne R. Myers (Zone 111) and Becky Stirn (Zone XII). Fall 2014. Summary of the Japan trip, including photographs of the group on the M.S. Chichibu Maru and of the Tokyo reception (pp. 13-14).
A Photographic Diary of the Visit of the Garden Club of America to Japan at the Invitation of Prince Iyesata Tokugawa. 125 photographs. List of activities, images of the women with ship officers, reception line at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Shinjuku Imperial Gardens, a silk mill, tea ceremony, and geisha dance. Collection of the Library of Congress. Not digitized.
Seale, William. The Garden Club of America: One Hundred Years of a Growing Legacy. The Garden Club of America, 2013. The Japan trip is described on page 230.
Mr. Seale’s sources in the GCA archives were participant Sarah Bulkley’s scrapbook’s photos, notes and momentos, and the text of her radio address to the Japanese people. The book includes two photos from the GCA Archives depicting the Japan trip. (Scrapbooks described on page 230; both photos in section preceding page 59.)
1) Photo of GCA President Mrs. Jonathan Bulkley and her husband: “At the invitation of the America-Japan Society and the Society for International Cultural Relations, ninety GCA members visited Japan in 1935…. [They] toured the gardens of Ryuanji, Daitokuji Monastery, and other sites.”
2) Photo of Mrs. Robert H. Fife of the Middletown (CT) Garden Club, with Leis upon her welcome to Honolulu.
Shinkokai, Kolusai Bunka. Gardens in Japan Visited by the Garden Club of America, May 1935. Society for International Relations, 1935. 4 pages.
Shoji Yamada. Shots in the Dark: Japan, Zen and the West. University of Chicago Press, 2009. pp. 198-199.
GCA Japan Trip 1935