Vashon-Maury Island Garden Club’s 60th Anniversary Exhibit

I must confess that I viewed the Vashon-Maury Island Garden Club largely as a passel of peculiar, singly-focused (mostly) women who meet occasionally to obsess about plants and wear silly hats. In my own defense I was not entirely wrong, because they certainly are that, but that fact turned out to be the barest scratch of the surface of an organization of unexpected depth and quiet, selfless devotion to the Vashon community as a whole. And, somewhat surprisingly, I learned this not from the Club itself, but rather a local Ph.D academic/historian unaffiliated with the Club.

The unadorned facts are quite simple: the Vashon-Maury Island Garden Club, as part of its 60th anniversary celebration, will have an exhibit at the Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Association Museum entitled "Passion in the Dirt", running from October 5, 2012 through February 28, 2013. The Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM. Admission by donation.

The "Passion in the Dirt" exhibit itself is broken down into a number of thematic displays which, individually within themselves, are further broken down chronologically. Some of the displays are: The Community Garden Awards; Flower Fairs, Festivals and Shows; Flower Arranging; Horticultural Education; Island Beautification; Fellowship. There will also be a display of at least 25 garden hats contributed to the exhibit by Club members.

But things really start to get interesting when one begins to explore the background and subtext of the Garden Club’s 60th Anniversary Exhibit; what is there about a Garden Club that would particularly pique the interest of a history Museum to the extent of putting on a five-month-long exhibit about it? The answer to that question suggests that the Garden Club’s 60th Anniversary Exhibit has elements of interest to a far wider audience than merely garden enthusiasts.

The notion of a Garden Club exhibit at the Heritage Museum seemed to have a charmed existence from the beginning. About a year or so ago, Jaralene Spring, the Garden Club Historian at the time, began talking to other Garden Club members about the upcoming significant Club anniversary date. Susan Hedrick brought up the idea about doing something with the Heritage Museum in light of the recent success of The Apron Show at the Museum. As luck would have it, Hunter Davis, Susan Hedrick and Patty Custer were members of the Garden Club. Hunter Davis and Susan Hedrick had been curators in the Apron Show and Patty Custer was on the board of the Heritage Museum. After a couple of meetings with the Museum, which coincidentally already had some historical documents related to the Garden Club, a Garden Club committee was formed, and the idea of a Garden Club exhibit at the Museum took off.

Bruce Haulman, a Board of Trustees member of the Heritage Museum, a Ph.D from the University of Washington and author of "Images of America: Vashon-Maury Island" (ISBN-10: 0738574996), one of the few history books covering Vashon Island, acted as the liaison representing the Heritage Museum with the Garden Club. I interviewed Dr. Haulman and a rather fascinating story came out.

The Heritage Association had been contacting agriculturally-related organizations (VIGA, The Garden Club, The Grange, etc.) with an eye to staging some events related to Vashon agricultural history. For various reasons, the agricultural idea did not pan out, but the Garden Club brought up the fact of their upcoming 60th anniversary. The Heritage Association had already had a recent positive relationship with some Garden Club members, and so a Garden Club exhibit seemed to be a natural.

But what is there about the Garden Club that would be of interest to the Heritage Association and from the Heritage Association’s perspective, to the larger audience of Vashon Island as a whole?

In the general sense, flowing wells of historical information are few and far between, even in small, relatively close-knit communities like Vashon Island. Whole communities do not generally document their history as a standard practice. Clubs and organizations like the Vashon-Maury Island Garden Club, on the other hand, DO keep relatively good records about their doings and activities. Club documents, consisting of everything from meeting minutes, evolutions of the bylaws, documents relating to projects and events, and so on, act as a sort of cultural/sociological "kitchen middens" which when viewed with an educated and practiced historical eye, can reveal and accurately reflect tectonic shifts in the larger society/community in which the Club operates. Dr. Haulman referred to clubs like the Garden Club as "mini [historical] tape recorders and sort of the heartbeat of the community".

As examples, Club records help document and illustrate Vashon’s overall transition away from an agricultural focus beginning roughly in the 1940s. The decline of agricultural clubs and the rise of gardening clubs carries overtones of cultural evolution. Diving deeper into the membership and focus of the Garden Club itself reveals an early heavy focus on flower arrangement as a centerpiece of club activities participated in largely by female homemakers. The demographics of the Garden Club today reveals a membership far more diverse in background and interest. These shifts also carry large amounts of cultural evolution information.

Garden Club events themselves suggest vast shifts in value systems. At one time, one of the Garden Club flower show centerpieces touted the building of a bridge across Vashon Island as a wonderful opportunity for the Island, a reflection of the overall positive view the Island population had of such a prospect at that time. Contrast that to the reaction of the Island community in relatively recent years when such a subject has arisen.

The Garden Club, both individually and taken as a piece of the larger mosaic of historical information potentially harvestable from the collection of clubs and organizations represent a farm of invaluable little cultural "tape recorders" of life on Vashon Island, information that might not otherwise be available at all.

Dr. Haulman and the Heritage Association have a plan to take over the world, or at least the historical aspect of Vashon Island. He hopes the Heritage Association will become a formal, long-term home of all of the Garden Club’s historical documents to be held in the Association’s advanced and carefully maintained storage facilities. Further, he hopes the other clubs and organizations will take a cue from the Vashon-Maury Island Garden Club’s 60th Anniversary Exhibit: "Passion in the Dirt" and make use of the safekeeping facilities of the Heritage Association to help preserve Vashon history for future generations.

When I asked Dr. Haulman if he had discovered anything unexpected as a result of his exposure to the Garden Club as preparations for the upcoming exhibit progressed, he said, "[I was surprised by] just how involved [the Garden Club] has been in the community over the years. I never had the sense of how much philanthropic work they’ve done. And it’s all under the radar. The level to which they’ve been involved over the years has been of interest to me. I never knew that." Dr. Haulman was referring to the Garden Club’s heavy involvement in a range of community projects, historically and present day; e.g. college student scholarships, Community Garden Awards (ongoing for decades), annual flower fair, summer floral and horticultural exhibit, weekly flower arrangements for the Senior Center, annual plant sale (a standing-room-only, sellout event every year), horticultural education in Vashon schools, Vashon Community Care Outreach and so on.

Other examples of Garden Club community contributions are the garden at Vashon Community Care, the original designing and landscaping at Inspiration Point, a shade shed for the horticulture program at the Vashon High School, soil for the Chatauqua school gardens, funds to the Harbor School for their garden program, and etc. The list is virtually endless.

And so, much to my surprise, the list of good things that flow from the (mostly) ladies of the Vashon-Maury Island Garden Club is a lot more varied, interesting, admirable (and important) than I realized.