The Garden Club of Marlton is about growing much more than just plants.
It’s about growing long-lasting friendships and a sense of community service that have allowed the club to endure to a time where members now find themselves celebrating the club’s 40th anniversary.
Much like the plant life the club has cultivated over these last four decades, the Garden Club of Marlton has spent its years extending its roots all throughout town.
Planting and maintaining the potted plants along Main Street, the Gibson House Community Center and Post Office each year? That’s the Garden Club.
Running the annual flower show at the Wiley Christian Retirement Community? That’s the Garden Club.
Annually awarding two $1,000 scholarships to graduating seniors at Cherokee High School and Burlington County Institute of Technology who are involved with environmental studies? That’s the Garden Club.
From cleaning a portion of Braddock Mill Road twice a year, to maintaining gardens at the historical John Inskeep House, to even providing monthly flower arrangements for the Evesham Library, one might be hard pressed to find a part of the township the Garden Club of Marlton hasn’t covered at some point in its 40-year history.
That history first dates to 1976 when a group of Marlton residents decided to start a garden club, which the town had never had before.
According to Beverly Thompson, the club’s only remaining charter member who attended the club’s first meeting, she and a neighbor read about the club’s initial meeting in a newspaper and decided to attend.
“It was funny because my neighbor and I were both expecting babies in September, and the club started in September, so we’re about eight-and-a-half months pregnant, and we waddled in and the speaker was speaking on propagation, which got a lot of chuckles from the membership,” Thompson said.
From that first meeting, Thompson said she just loved the club and everything it was about.
“Everybody was friendly. It was the very first meeting and at that meeting they gave the programs for the year and they had a fundraiser and I just loved it,” Thompson said. “The club has grown over the years, and we do a lot of good works in our town.”
Thompson said the club had about 22 members at that first meeting in 1976, and that number has since grown to 54 members by the club’s count at its most recent meeting.
When asked why she believes the club has been able to last as long as it has, Thompson said members have always bonded beyond their common interests once they’ve joined.
“Everybody truly cares about each other,” Thompson said. “I just went through a crisis this summer with my husband’s health, and the club was just there for me. That’s what we do besides gardening and doing things for the community; we’re there for each other.”
Val Donor, who handles the club’s public relations, echoed Thompson’s sentiments.
“It’s a nice way of making friends,” Donor said. “I came to learn about flowers because I’m not a gardener, but what I got was friends. They’re like flowers — the longer you’re there the more they bloom.”
The Garden Club of Marlton meets monthly throughout most of the year at The Gibson House Community Center, where the club often listens to topical presentations related to gardening and nature.
For additional information call (856) 906–9837.
