Visit any park, public building, school or church in Crystal Lake, and the Green Gate Garden Club likely has been there, cultivating a landscape filled with plants and flowers.
The group of about 20 members has had a massive, if relatively quiet, presence in Crystal Lake for 75 years, creating and tending dozens of gardens, including at the Colonel Palmer House, the butterfly garden at the Nature Center and plantings outside the Crystal Lake Food Pantry, police and fire stations, the library, schools, churches and health care facilities, in recreational areas, downtown and along major highways and intersections.
The garden club is celebrating two major milestones: the 75th anniversary of the Green Twig Garden Club and the 65th anniversary of the Garden Gate Club. The two clubs joined together a few years ago to become what is now known as the Green Gate Garden Club.
The club doesn’t only do gardening. Members also sponsor a McHenry County College scholarship for students pursuing horticulture, hosts an annual plant sale, creates floral arrangements for the Fisher Outreach’s Adopt-a-Grandparent program, partners with Crystal Lake schools to honor Arbor Day and creates and places holiday wreaths on the Veterans Memorial area inside Depot Park every year.
One of the biggest feats is creating the Blue Star Memorial Garden at the Colonel Palmer House, which honors veterans and the military.
Many of the members create arrangements and gardens by providing plants from their own yards, member Ann DiNatali said.
She said her favorite aspect of being in the group is simply “making a little change here and there” that can uplift people’s spirits.
Some members, like Patricia Blaul, have been with the group since the 1960s. She is known by her peers as the flower arraignment expert, having had formal education in the subject, and she used to be a formal judge.
Garden clubs were generally reserved for only male members in the 1800s. Illinois’ first women’s garden club was established in the late 1800s, Sarah Taylor, Colonel Palmer House supervisor and Green Gate Garden Club member, said.
Garden clubs in Crystal Lake have been a tradition for over a century, with the first group forming in 1922, according to the Crystal Lake Historical Society. The primary goal was to beatify the city with curated gardens, which still stands today.
The Green Gate Garden Club is open to anyone, no matter their gardening experience. Club President Marilyn Kay said gaining more members is the club’s main struggle, especially ones younger in age.
“Our knees are getting old,” she said. “We now have the time, but don’t have the physical ability.”
As for the next 75 years, Kay hopes the club will simply still be around.
Taylor said the club is a great way to develop friendship because of the strong bonds the members create with each other.
“It becomes so much more than a club,” she said. “It’s a family.”
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