It was the Roaring ’20s, six years after women had gained the right to vote. They sported drop-waist dresses, bob hairstyles and new attitudes. Many started coming together to form garden clubs focused on civic beautification.
A handful of women formed the Morgan Park Garden Club, as it was first known, in 1926. In 1927, the club was officially chartered as a member of The Garden Club of Illinois.
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of The Garden Club of Beverly Morgan Park, club member Eileen Quirk Rowan spent two months crafting a still life picture of more than 100 colorful knit and crochet flowers. The yarn painting is making the rounds to local businesses, spending a month at a time at Afro Joe’s, Everything’s Relative, County Fair, as well as the Beverly Arts Center and other local establishments.
Rowan volunteers regularly and has helped manage the club’s community plant and seed sales. Her desire to serve her local community harkens back to the club’s very beginnings.
Kicking off a year-long observance of the club’s 100-year anniversary, Rowan’s fellow club member P.J. Pistek recently gave a PowerPoint presentation to a large group gathered after a monthly meeting at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, 9401 S. Oakley. It was just one of many commemorative events scheduled for this year.
Others will include Gardening in the 1920s presentations on heirloom tomato varieties and other plants of the era, a field trip to Morton Arboretum — which was also established in the 1920s, a presentation on prairies by Chicago High School of Agricultural Sciences students and participation in the 100th annual Morgan Park/Beverly Memorial Day Parade.
The club will also assist with registration for the Beverly Area Planning Association’s Annual Garden Walk and hold a free community day event at the Beverly Arts Center where it maintains a pollinator garden, a permaculture garden and monarch flyway station.
After the Chicago fire of 1849, Pistek said, many families moved south, to an area graced by tall trees and divided into large residential lots with plenty of room for gardening. Fast forward to the 1920s, the city of Chicago annexed the village of Morgan Park, and there was no budget to continue maintenance of the area’s unique triangular-shaped public parks. Local residents stepped in to pick up the slack.
In the early years, club membership topped out at 20 and was restricted to women. Members had to be chosen by a nominating committee, based on the appearance of their gardens and their reputation.
Some didn’t make the cut, and those that did had to follow a decorum of addressing fellow club members as Mrs. So and So with no first names.
More than 50 members of the Garden Club of Beverly Morgan Park gather for a photo commemorating the club’s 100th anniversary during a recent meeting. Total club membership now is 103, after being capped at 20 for decades, when membership also was restricted to women. (Susan DeGrane/Daily Southtown)
The club changed with the times. Members started using first names in the 1970s. The club now has 103 members of diverse backgrounds, including 14 men.
“For a $25 membership, there’s so much fun stuff to do,” said David Perry of North Beverly. In 2013, he became the first man to join the club and has served several years as club treasurer.
Ticking off a typical year of events, he shared fond memories of plant sales, summer garden walks, “play dates” to tend garden plots in the community, informative presentations, and annual field trips to places like Garfield Park Conservatory and Chicago Botanical Gardens.
Once the club visited the estate of TV journalist Bill Kurtis to learn about his prairie restoration efforts. Another year they visited the rooftop gardens of the Gary Comer Youth Center Roof Garden on Chicago’s South Side.
Besides the area’s triangular parks, the club’s past beautification efforts have also included the Walker Branch library, 91st Street Rock Island train station grounds, and the Edna White Garden. Other local groups have taken over the care of these locations, but the club’s work has continued at the Beverly Arts Center since the early 2000s.
Gardening together enhances club comradery along with the swapping gardening tips, club members say. Club affiliation has been beneficial for other community works some undertake on their own.
The Roy Diblik Garden on the west side of the Beverly Arts Center is maintained by the Garden Club of Beverly Morgan Park and exemplifies sustainable gardening practices. (Susan DeGrane/Daily Southtown)
A master gardener, Perry is partial to day lilies which grow in abundance on the grounds of Kellogg Elementary School in North Beverly. He said he uses knowledge he’s gained from training as a master gardener, and from Garden Club presentations and fellow members, to assist students and parents with maintaining the Kellogg’s two pollinator gardens.
Donald Atkinson also appreciates the club as a community resource, but admits he came to the first club meeting with false assumptions.
“My wife roped me into joining, and I thought it was just going to be a lot of people eating and gossiping, but the first time I went, I thought, these people know some things.”
He said he has sought and received sound advice on landscaping and garden infrastructure for a garden he’s helped establish for St. Margaret of Scotland parish grounds in Morgan Park.
“I wanted to know about perennials that were low maintenance but that look good,” he said. “I also wanted to find out about companies that pour concrete for custom statue pedestals. I would not have tried doing any of this if I had not come here.”
Perry and Atkinson’s yeomen’s tasks in the community should come as no surprise. The club has always identified itself as “a working group.”
In the early days, members donated garden flowers and fruits, jams and juices to those less fortunate, including veterans, a girls’ home and hospital patients. During World War II, club members helped dig and plant victory garden plots.
Native flowers such as black-eyed Susans and purple coneflowers highlight a landscape design at the Roy Diblik Garden at the Beverly Arts Center, where the Garden Club of Beverly Morgan Park showcases sustainable gardening practices. (Susan DeGrane/Daily Southtown)
They’ve hosted seed sales and flower shows, and they’ve held demonstrations on how to plant bulbs, how to make macrame plant hangers, creating herb-flavored vinegars and companion planting.
Taking honors at Navy Pier Flower Shows and Modern Living Shows, the club also has raised community awareness of everything from gardening with native plants to Japanese flower arranging.
By 1978, the club’s meetings outgrew members’ homes and they started meeting at a Chicago Park District house. These days, the group meets regularly at Bethlehem Lutheran Church.
Dorothy Straughter is said to be the club’s 100th member. She joined the club in 2023, she said, “because I was already doing gardening things.” She and her husband maintain an impressive home garden on the 97th block of Longwood that’s been featured as a BAPA Garden Walk destination.
“I thought it (the club) was just going to be a bunch of ladies that got together and went out, but it turned out to be more,” Straughter said.
Over the decades the club has invited garden authorities to speak on a variety of garden cutting-edge topics including tree care and dangers posed by pesticides. One year they invited noted permaculture expert Roy Diblik to speak about building healthy soil and plant communities. They later committed to maintaining a garden space at the Beverly Arts Center honoring his pioneering efforts.
Susan DeGrane is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
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