The Home Garden Club of Morristown began as the Garden Department within the Current News Club of Morristown; the Garden Club held its first meeting on November 5, 1924 when members decided to hold monthly meetings to study successes and failures in gardening methods. Growing interest and membership rolls encouraged the group to become an independent club when the issue was brought to a vote in December of 1925.
Having voted to join the Garden Club of New Jersey in 1926, the Home Garden Club embarked on a series of activities and programs, including holding flower shows, holding workshops on best practices and techniques, and organizing teas and socials. Club members also advocated for issues affected the greater community, such as composting rather than burning leaves, encouraging the formation of mosquito abatement commissions, and pushing for regulation of billboards when they started appearing in the 1920s.
During the Great Depression, Club members attempted to find work for unemployed gardeners, gave out seeds and awarded prizes for the gardens of unemployed residents, and supported Girl Scout activities. In 1933, the Home Garden Club began the custom of supplying the Morristown Library with floral arrangements, as well as furnishing a wreath for the doorway of Washington's Headquarters each Christmas season (1930).
From the 1940s through the 1980s, the Home Garden Club of Morristown dutifully selected areas of the downtown for beautification; an open space on the corner of South Street and Madison Avenue, Memorial Hospital, area schools, and the Morris Museum. The Club also partnered with other regional groups to present lectures and trips, such as the Audubon Society, Acorn Hall, New York Botanical Garden, and the Cloisters.
In subsequent years, the Home Garden Club expanded its activities to include regular trips to regional historic gardens and estates, such as Duke Gardens and Buck Gardens. Flower shows, lectures from various experts, and beautification projects continued to provide the backbone of Club activities. Heading into the 1990s, lecture topics reflected changing concerns among Morristown gardeners and included topics such as deer-resistant landscaping, cultivating home-grown herbs, and planting flowers to attract specific types of birds. As of 2019, the Home Garden Club continued holding monthly meetings while sponsoring floral arrangements and beautification projects for local hospitals and historic sites, as well as hosting regular lectures, field trips, and other activities.
This collection consists of the administrative and working papers of the Home Garden Club of Morristown, which date from to its founding in 1925 to the present. The records are organized into seven main series: Administration, Board and President Files, Club Activity, Committees, Awards, Photographs, and Slides. Administration papers are comprised of by-laws, histories of the organization, and annual reports, or "yearbooks", summarizing the Club's activities. Board and President's Files are comprised of the President's Annual Reports, Corresponding Secretary and Finance records. The Committees series contains the records of the Acorn Hall Committee, as well as the Audubon Society, and Miscellaneous committees, and Meeting Minutes.
The Awards Series includes both awards won by the Home Garden Club, in addition to applications and awards granted to others. The Club Activities series documents Club members work on creating Memorials, Programs, Publicity, Publications, and participation in National and Regional Activity. Lastly, the Photographs and Slide series capture the organization's activities from 1945 to 1992.
According to the 60th anniversary publication the minutes from 1930 through 1935 are missing, although a digest of activity from these years appears in the 25th anniversary history.
Within each series, the materials are organized chronologically according to each sub-series. This was kept in accordance with the original order in which the records were received.
This collection is open for research under the conditions set forth in the North Jersey History and Genealogy Center archives access policy. All archival material should be handled with care and kept in its original order; notes may only be taken in pencil or with a computer, and food and drink are prohibited in the Reading Room. Records may be copied for scholarly or personal research using the edge scanner or a digital camera without flash; however, researchers must obtain copyright permission prior to publishing material from the collection.
Home Garden Club of Morristown Records, 1925 - 2022, North Jersey History and Genealogy Center, Morristown and Morris Township Library.
Processed, described and encoded by Jeffrey V. Moy, Archivist, March 2019. Updated January 2023.