One hundred years ago, a group of women gathered with an aim of environmental preservation in the tiny village of Lake Bluff.
“These were women who wanted to preserve the natural beauty of the time,” said Daun Roth, who chairs the Centennial Committee of the Lake Bluff Garden Club. For the last year, Roth has been researching the history of the Club for an exhibit that opened May 20 at the Lake Bluff History Museum titled, “A Village Beautiful – Deeply Rooted in Lake Bluff for 100 years.”
The Club first met on May 6, 1917, in a home on Prospect Avenue, according to a 1995 Lake County News-Sun article. The United States had just entered World War I, and “for the first few years, bandages took priority over blooms. Members rolled dressing, knitted scarves for the doughboys and visited hospitals,” it said.
The Club formally organized in 1922, according to documents at the Lake Forest Lake Bluff Historical Society. It held its first plant sale in 1926 and raised $21.05, “which they thought was a lot of money,” Roth said.
In the 1920s, Club members made personal calls on newcomers to Lake Bluff, “who were strongly admonished to protect the wildflowers (in the ravines) and not to pick the trillium,” according the News-Sun article. “Citizens were urged to stop dumping trash into the ravines and gardens.”
“I would call them environmental activists,” Roth said. “They were green before it was popular to be green.”
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The Club’s accomplishments over the decades, according to Roth, include: planting shrubs, trees and flowers at Great Lakes Naval Station, contributing money for landscaping at the train station and public safety building, designing Washington Park in 1995, planting community gardens and donating trees in the 1940s and 1950s and planting trees along Rockland Road near Green Bay Road.
The Club continues to plant flowers in 44 containers in downtown Lake Bluff and maintains gardens in Washington Park, said Club President Marty Anderson. The Club is currently working on landscaping at Lake Bluff Middle School – which was recently renovated and expanded – in an effort with students and is donating money for birch trees for the bluff of Lake Bluff in a joint project with the Lake Bluff Park District, Anderson said.
“It’s very civic-minded and hands-on,” Roth said. “A group of women who didn’t just want to go to a meeting and have a program.”
The Club currently has 30 members and is looking for new members, Anderson said.
Anderson credits the Club’s longevity to the members’ shared mission.
“We all share a mission to beautify and make our village enjoyable to look at,” Anderson said.
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