The Elmira Garden Club

By Susan Zehnder, Education Director

Every season planters in front of our museum are creatively arranged by members of the Elmira Garden Club. We always appreciate their work.

While our museum has been located on East Water Street for close to thirty-nine years, the Elmira Garden Club has been going strong and part of the community for ninety-two years. The idea of a club began as an inspiration of a local high school senior. James H. Draper, Jr. later said he always enjoyed flowers and gardening, and wanted to start a club similar to garden clubs popping up in other cities.

 

Garden Club founder James H. Draper, Jr. 1928

In early 1928, James placed an ad in the paper hoping to find other like-minded people. Fifteen people responded, and convinced he could find more, James placed a second ad. When another fifteen people showed up, the group had thirty members and the club began. The group met at Steele Memorial Library and elected James Draper as the club’s first president. He held this position for the next four years, during which time membership grew to more than sixty-five people. Soon after it began, the club affiliated with the Federal Garden Clubs of New York, broadening its scope.

Founded to promote, instruct, and assist area gardeners, its members also strived to conserve and protect forests and waterways for wildlife and recreation. At one early meeting, Chemung County 4-H leader Frank Essick spoke in favor of Elmira’s new club. He let them all know they could count on the endorsement and resources of Cornell University’s College of Agriculture.

Early club activities included an annual flower show, and garden workshops for novice and experienced gardeners.

 

Dahlia show display at Arnot Mall, September, 1969

Meetings often featured speakers, who presented a variety of garden-related topics. In 1935, the club was instrumental in introducing an important conservation organization to the area, the Audubon Society. Formed in 1905, they are a non-profit environmental - and one of the oldest - organizations to use science, education and grassroots advocacy to advance its conservation mission.

The Garden Club was also actively involved in keeping Elmira beautiful, and received national recognition for their outstanding civic beautification projects.

While club meetings continued to be held at Steele Memorial Library, an opportunity arose for them to obtain their own clubhouse, which included available space to garden. The building at Fulton and Pleasant Streets had once housed the hospital for Civil War families and was later used as an orphan asylum. It had been abandoned and vacant since the 1930s.

 

Elmira Garden Clubhouse

Agreeing to care for the building and grounds, the Elmira Garden Club took it over and nine years later were able to purchase the property. The year was 1943. The USA was involved in WWII, and not surprisingly the featured garden that year celebrated Victory Gardens.

In addition to annual flower shows, Elmira Garden Club activities have included planting window boxes at the Post Office, assisting City Planners with mini-park landscaping, plantings at Mark Twain’s and Hal Roach’s gravesites, and container gardens at the Arnot Art Museum. Members have been involved in beautifying gardens surrounding the SPCA in Big Flats, and gardens at Riverfront and Wisner Parks.

Over the years, club membership has fluctuated. Numbers have been as high as 150 and as few as 27. Today, according to Garden Club President Karen Coletta, there are eighty-three active members. The group meets at their clubhouse located at 426 Fulton Street, gathering at 6:30 pm on the first Thursday of each month, from April through December. All are welcome to join their hands-on workshops, and hear invited guest speakers. More information can be found on their website. 

Founder James Draper, Jr. was a member of the Elmira Garden Club until he died in 1967. By then he had served as director of the sixth district of the Federated Garden Clubs of New York State which had jurisdiction over similar garden clubs in Broome, Chemung, Onondaga, Chenango, Cortland, Delaware, Otsego, Schuyler, Tioga, Tompkins and Madison counties. He had also organized the Garden Club Workers of Western New York, and served as its president for two years. Well-known as a gardening expert, he wrote a gardening column for the Sunday Telegram as well as other New York newspapers and various home magazines. Reading the entry in his 1928 senior yearbook we can almost imagine a gardener, though he writes ‘undecided’ for his direction.

In addition to our outdoor planters, the Elmira Garden Club supplies the Chemung County Historical Society with holiday wreaths, and arranges flowers for our annual Great Car Thing fundraiser in early June. We are lucky to benefit from their hard work and grateful for what they continue to do. 

Enjoying the flowers at The Great Car Thing, June 2019

How Does Your Garden Grow?

by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

Last year Southside Community Center planted a community garden. They grew and harvested strawberries and cabbage.

Strawberry harvest from Southside Community Garden

Access to fresh fruits and vegetables from your own garden can be a seasonal bonus. Growing your own food isn’t new, and gardening as an American pastime has varied in popularity. As we slide into fall, here’s a snapshot of American home gardens over the last two hundred years.

At first, early settlers planted gardens at home for survival. Their gardens supplied most of their fresh fruit and vegetable needs. During the 1800s, storing and preserving methods improved, and more shops and food markets came into business. The reasons why people gardened and what they grew now changed. Having a garden at home became less critical, and growing flowers became popular. By the end of the 1800s, more gardeners grew decorative and ornamental plants than edible ones. 

American middle class home owners, heavily influenced by English landscape styles, started adding manicured lawns to the front of their homes. This moved food gardens to side or back yards. The image of a Victorian house and garden plan here from 1890s is a good example.

The house area is blue, and the food garden area is marked in pink. Foods  listed are currants, raspberries and grapes. These crops are hardly the kinds of food that would sustain a family. For many Americans, gardening became a hobby.

The early 20th century saw US citizens encouraged by the government to rethink this. During WWI, Americans were asked to step up and do their patriotic duty by preserving and growing their own food, again.

Later in WWII, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked every American household to grow “victory” gardens to support the country's war efforts.

 

By 1943, close to 20 million home gardens flourished in the United States. Amazingly, these Victory gardens supplied almost half of the country's produce grown that year. Post wartime years returned better access to food, and many people became less interested in home gardening.

The 1970s brought renewed interest in gardening, directly inspired by the back-to-nature ecology movements. Concerns about chemical hazards prompted many gardeners to start using more organic gardening methods.

Today, reports indicate one-third of American households grow some sort of food crop. Living situations have changed over the last two hundred years, and finding spaces to garden today can be challenging. It’s not uncommon for people to grow edible plants in small spaces using containers and trellis supports. It's an opportunity to look at different kinds of gardens, like Southside’s community garden.

Community gardens, on private or public lands are defined as a single plot of land gardened collectively by a group of people. Like their name, these gardens provide a sense of community and connection to the neighborhood and to the environment, much like the garden at Elmira’s Southside Community Center. When asked what she thought the biggest impact the Center’s garden had on the kids, Director Cathleen Deery responded:

“…there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing something useful (especially edible!) that you’ve made yourself. Your success is obvious. I think that many of the Center’s kids especially need that sense of personal efficacy.”

 

Southside Community Gardener at work

In 1979, the Star-Gazette featured an article on Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) of Chemung County, highlighting three community gardens. For more than one hundred years, CCE of Chemung County has offered classes to area farmers, local gardeners and interested hobbyists. Today, CCE's website lists over 10 community gardens located throughout Chemung County, along with helpful gardening advice: http://chemung.cce.cornell.edu/

One local company that started business in Elmira in 1880 as Jennings Seed Company on West Water Street provided seeds in small pouches like this to gardeners.

 

Small seed pouch

Renaming the company to Banfield-Jennings, they relocated to the Miracle Mile in Horseheads, where they continue to offer products and advice to gardeners with garden and lawn needs. 

Whether using containers, a backyard plot or being part of a community effort, what we grow in our gardens and the reasons we garden, differ. Few home gardens are planted for survival anymore. It just costs more in time and effort to grow our own food. We are lucky that food is widely available at local supermarkets, and food markets. Yet, we garden. An informal poll of nonprofessional gardeners by a large Midwest university found today’s gardeners rate exercise, beauty, and learning about plants and the food we eat as the top reasons they choose to garden. 

These proud gardeners from Southside Community Center reflect how gardening can be something to be proud of.

Proud Southside Community Center Gardeners

Harvest Time at the Museum

by Erin Doane, curator

The season is wrapping up for our three small garden beds out in front of the museum. There are still a lot of tomatoes slowly turning red and the ornamental corn still has a ways to go but we've harvested nearly everything else. For the size of the gardens, I'd say we had a fairly good harvest.

After finally defeating (or at least strongly discouraging) the squirrels, almost everything grew well. The runner beans didn't do that well and the peas and spinach were just planted too late but otherwise, I'd call it a success. 

Roma tomatoes and ornamental corn

I just love cooking with fresh, home-grown (museum-grown?) vegetables and I made a lot of different things from our little plots. The cucumbers did really well and I think everyone on staff took some home. I sliced some up and mixed in some onion, sour cream, vinegar, salt and pepper, and a bit of sugar.

Chicago pickling cucumbers

We also had an abundance of basil that got shared around. I made a lot of pesto and used some full leaves on a tomato sandwich I made with one of the German Giant tomatoes from the garden. The German Giants are huge, lovely, tasty tomatoes and I’m definitely going to look for them again next year for my own garden.

Sweet basil and pesto

Sliced German Giant tomato and tomato sandwich with fresh basil

The root crops did well in our Victorian garden.  There were enough beets for two or three servings.  I oven roasted them will a little oil, salt and pepper.  The carrots were short and stout but there were a lot of them. I shredded some and combined them with pineapple, raisins and yogurt. While some folks seemed skeptical of the recipe, I thought it was very tasty.  There are still a lot of carrots in the garden bed. Maybe I’ll have to make a carrot cake next. 

Ruby queen beets

Early chantenay red-cored carrots

The pumpkins in the Three Sisters garden had a really good start but the leaves got powdery mildew in the middle of the season.  There was enough time, however, to get two nice little pumpkins before the vines died.  I cooked up one and made it into a pumpkin cheesecake. That was definitely the staff favorite of all the dishes that came out the garden.  If anyone is interested in the recipe you can find it here.  I’m not sure what to do with the second pumpkin.  Suggestions?

Early sweet sugar pie pumpkins and pumpkin cheesecake

Visitors seemed to enjoy seeing the gardens growing outside the museum and it drew people in to see our agriculture exhibit.  We even gave a couple little tours of the gardens where children could touch and smell the plants and herbs.  I am really pleased with the way the gardens turned out and with all the good food we got from them.