Records of the Cambridge Plant and Garden Club, 1889-2012

The records of the Cambridge Plant and Garden Club consist of minutes, membership records, programs, correspondence, awards, clippings, memorabilia, etc., documenting the activities of the organization and its members including their civic planting and landscape designs, conservation activities, historic garden research, etc. Additional material received 1993-2012 (accession numbers 93-M72, 93-M135, 94-M17, 95-M114, 97-M112, 98-M174, 99-M162, 2002-M76, 2002-M102, 2002-M105, 2003-M139, 2007-M115, 2011-M181, 2012-M169, 2012-M182) was added to the collection in March 2015. Four audiotapes (2015-M119) were added to the collection in August 2015. These materials are housed in #206v-437t. Slides originally housed in carton 18 were sleeved and are now housed in #309, 316, and 162. One audiotape originally housed in carton 18 and previously undescribed can be found in the finding aid as #321t (T-513.1). Folders added in March 2015 are listed in intellectual, not sequential order. The records have been divided into four series:

Series I, ANNIVERSARIES, AWARDS, ETC., 1915-1995 (#1-28, 206v-212), consists of awards, photographs, programs, clippings, and other material documenting the celebrations of the club's anniversaries in 1939, 1949, 1959, 1964, and 1989; there are also research notes and photocopies of documents used in compiling the centennial history of the club, clippings about the club, and memorabilia.

Series II, RECORDS, 1889-2004 (#29v-110, 213-298o), consists of minutes, committee reports, financial accounts, a few texts of talks, membership correspondence, obituaries, clippings about members, etc. These materials document the programs and activities of the Cambridge Plant and Garden Club and its predecessors, the Cambridge Plant Club (known briefly as the Floricultural Society) and the Cambridge Garden Club, from 1889 to the present. Programs consist of lectures on landscape history, flowering bulb workshops, luncheons, annual dinners, etc.

Series III, PROJECTS, 1909-2012 (#111-180+, 299-356, 434t-437t), consists of reports, correspondence, color slides, and photographs describing the many civic and social causes for which the Cambridge Plant and Garden Club has worked or given funds. In the 1940s and 1950s, after World War II, the club undertook to send seeds to Czechoslovakia and England, fund horticultural therapy in Veterans' Administration hospitals, clean up the Old Burying Ground, and replant Cambridge Common.

There are designs, blueprints, reports, and awards that illustrate the continuous work of the Cambridge Plant and Garden Club since 1963 to reclaim, restore, and maintain many different sections of the Fresh Pond Reservation. There are also records of the Cambridge Plant and Garden Club's assistance with planning and maintenance of Winthrop Square Park and its successful protest against development of a new garden and pump in Harvard Yard. There are designs, reports, and correspondence relating to historic garden restoration projects at Longfellow House and the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House, and descriptions and some designs for members' gardens in Cambridge and elsewhere (see #180+). Also included are minutes, correspondence, etc., of a number of the club's committees, most notably the Conservation Committee, which focused on recycling, clean water, and the proper disposal of hazardous waste in the City of Cambridge. The concern of some members of the club over nuclear disarmament, is also seen in the activities of the Conservation Committee and in the newsletter, Conservation News and Action, edited by Dorothy LeMessurier, 1982-1989. Members of the club also served as members of the City of Cambridge's Committee on Public Planting which recommended landscape design and trees for planting in various parts of the city with some of the funding of these projects provided by the club's Tree Fund. Slides that were originally housed in carton 18 are now located in #309, 316, and 162.

Photographs, awards, correspondence, and designs demonstrate the frequent participation and success of the club in exhibitions at the New England Flower Shows, 1929-1965, and in The Garden Club of America's floral arrangement competitions.

Series IV, OTHER ASSOCIATIONS, 1929-2007 (#181-205m, 357-433), includes awards, publications, and programs of the Garden Club of America, and memorabilia, etc., of the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.