presidents message

Our members are excited to continue to garden with purpose in 2023! Southern Butler County Garden Club maintains three gardens as community service projects. Two of these gardens are open to the public as community gardens and located in Graham Park, Cranberry Township and at the Mars Public Library in Mars. The third garden is located at the VOICe (Victims Outreach and Intervention Center) in Butler County and is on private property. In each of these gardens, Club members volunteer their time to plant, mulch, weed and water throughout the growing season. 

Southern Butler County Garden Club has won the Governor's Trophy! This is the highest award and honor to receive from the Garden Club Federation of Pennsylvania (GCFP). We competed with other medium size Clubs in Pennsylvania for 2021. This award is a true testament to our hard working members. From the Program Committee, to Hospitality, Membership, Fieldtrips and all of the countless hours of volunteer time for our Community Service Projects, our MEMBERS worked hard for this recognition.

As a non-profit organization, SBCGC raises money through our annual Garden Tour, raffle baskets and stepping stone sales. Every fall, we give back. For the year ending 2021, we donated $3000 to several community related gardening and environmental groups.

Our Time as Co-Presidents has come to an end. We can't thank our members enough for their wonderful support. Over the past four years, our collective experience of growing together as a Club and community has been amazing. 

The members of the Southern Butler County Garden Club would like to extend a heartfelt THANK YOU to our 212 guests that attended our 13th Annual Garden Tour in July. Your attendance made the tour a wonderful success! We truly appreciate all of the community support. Check back on our website for information regarding the 2022 tour. 

Now that life is slowly returning to some sort of normal for most of us, we hope you are having fun visiting local greenhouses and shopping for flowers and plants. Speaking of flowers...we'd like to invite you to our 13th Annual Garden Tour. Seven private gardens are on the tour this year. Each of the homeowners have created interesting landscape designs. Some of which include water features, a unique swing set and an unexpected "man cave" set into the woods...just to name a few.

Spring will be extra special this year as we look for an end to the pandemic and a return to what we hope will be our "normal life". Last year was spent learning new ways to stay connected. Club members are so thankful for the advances in technology and the people who were able to help us master using it. What a blessing our gardens were as a place where we could enjoy the outdoors. Our gardens also offered us a place to renew our mindset and give our spirits a lift.

Our Club was recently notified that we received a very prestigious honor...the Violet S. Thorn Award. This award is given by the CAR-SGC (Central Atlantic Region of State Garden Clubs). This region is made up of seven states, including Delaware, Maryland, National Capital Area, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. 

On December 1st, many of us looked out our windows in Western PA to see the first snowfall of the season. What an amazing sight of the beauty and resilience of nature. In 2020, we have experienced nature's fury through storms, floods and forest fires. Then COVID19 arrived. One positive was more time spent in our gardens. We can now experience nature in her natural form, as we move through the dormant season and look forward to her reawakening in the spring. 

It has been a strange and trying year for all of us. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused so much of life to be cancelled or put on hold. However, our Garden Club was blessed to be able to "Keep Calm & Garden On" having  our 12th Annual Garden Tour take place. Gardeners are a close bunch, so for safety's sake we made a few adjustments asking everyone to wear masks & social distance. Many of our guests thanked us for not cancelling the event and offering something wonderful for them to look forward to.