Club Associations and Flower Shows

According to the website of National Garden Clubs (NGC), the first garden club in America was founded in 1891 by The Ladies Garden Club of Athens (Georgia), and in 1929, an organizational meeting was held in Washington, D.C. in which thirteen federated states became charter members. The Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs was founded in 1933 with fifteen member clubs and became part of the Pacific Region of NGC comprising eight western states including Alaska and Hawaii.

The Kingston Garden Club voted in 1951 to join the Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs (WSFGC), but in 1953 voted to withdraw from the WSFGC due to the difficulties of attending meetings on the mainland. Those difficulties were resolved later that year by the creation of the Cross Sound District of the WSFGC comprising 21 charter club members including the Kingston Garden Club. Thus, KGC rejoined the WSFGC with a view toward participating in activities “on our own side of the Sound.”  Cross Sound District meetings were held periodically at Haddon Hall in Bremerton or the American Legion Hall in East Bremerton, with KGC members encouraged to attend. In 1954, Jeannie Kingman was chosen as the club’s delegate to the WSFGC Convention in Yakima.

She prepared detailed reports of her activities there, and shared some songs she had learned.

The first flower show in which the KGC submitted an entry was the First Annual Begonia Show hosted by the Kitsap Garden Club in the summer of 1951 at the Civic Center in Bremerton. The Kingston Garden Club won the show’s Second Prize for an entry called “Autumn Beach Table”, made by Pearl Soderburg, Dulcie Burger and Mildred Glover. KGC members brought ribbons home from many flower shows throughout the 1950s including the Central Valley Flower Show, Bremerton Rose Society Rose Show, the East Bremerton Garden Club Annual Spring Flower Show, and shows hosted by the Cross Sound District of the Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs.

Meeting minutes reflect that KGC members took the most blue ribbons , had the most entries, and had the largest representation of club members at the district flower show at Bremerton in 1959. The club received so many invitations to enter flower shows that they had to decline many of them. In 1952 for example, invitations to participate in the Seattle Centennial Spring Flower Show, the Green Fingers Garden Club Show, and the Amateur Gardeners Seventh Annual Camellia Show were declined.

 The KGC hosted the first flower show of its own in September of 1956 entitled “Pioneers”, and invited participation by the Indianola, Hood Canal, Ni-Se-Ka, Central Valley and Suquamish Garden Clubs.

It was a huge success, with 127 people in attendance and 65 ribbons awarded by the judges. The first show was followed by “Rustic Rhapsody” in 1957 (attended by 226 people), “Maytime” in 1958 and “Over the Garden Wall” in 1959 (which had 236 entries in Horticulture and 107 entries in the Decorative Division). 

A September 3, 1959 article appearing in The North Kitsap News reported that prizes for the club’s fourth annual flower show would be provided by Kingston merchants. Judging for the KGC flower shows was provided by local gardening authorities. With guidance from a judging book sent for in February, 1951, members also judged each others’ flower arrangements at regular club meetings and awarded prizes.

 Over the years, the interests of club members gradually shifted away from showing and arranging flowers to honing the art of growing plants. Ultimately, club members stopped competing in flower shows altogether, and withdrew again from the WSFGC and Cross Sound District in 1998, choosing instead to focus all of  their show-related energies on the Blanche Gray Garden Shows for elementary school children, launched in 1981 with its first show in 1982.

Next Page      Back to the 1950's Page

c2007 Kingston Garden Club