Leesburg Garden Club (Leesburg, Va.)

The Leesburg Garden Club was founded 9 Dec. 1915. Despite its name, members come from all sections of Loudoun County, Va. On 18 May 1926 the club became the fourteenth member of the Garden Club of Virginia (GCV) which had been founded in 1920 with the object of encouraging preservation, conservation, beautification, and restoration in the state. The GCV organized Garden Week in Virginia to earn money for this purpose and in 1929 the Leesburg Garden Club opened two historic houses and made "about $16." Proceeds have increased tremendously and by 2010 the club's gross receipts surpassed $10,000 for Garden Week, which takes place at the end of April each year. From the beginning the club had a number of civic projects as well as the members' own interests in gardening. Starting in 1917 members supplied fresh vegetables to the local hospital from their own gardens and from a garden which they established on the hospital grounds. They canned produce to provide vegetables for the staff and patients in winter in the days before freezers. This program continued until the early 1940s when the club switched its attention to landscaping at the hospital. Members also planted flowers to cheer up patients. Another early project was to help elementary school children plant flowers and teach them about beautification. This project expanded to become the Highway Development Committee and eventually the Beautification Committee which promotes the aesthetic improvement of Loudoun County and its towns and highways. The Leesburg Garden Club became a non-profit 501c3 organization in 1999 and has continued its civic work in order to maintain that status. The club has worked with Oatlands Plantation and Dodona Manor in preserving and maintaining these historic properties, which are open to the public. Each year it sends a child to Nature Camp where he or she learns the value and interest of nature conservation. A college scholarship is awarded each year to a high school student who will be studying in a horticulture related field. A long established custom has been for the members to meet in December to create wreaths and decorative greens to hang on Leesburg's unique swinging courthouse yard gates and the doors of Thomas Balch Library, the town's history and genealogy library. Other projects undertaken in the past have included encouraging homeowners to beautify their yards by giving them daffodil bulbs, planting dogwood trees in public spaces, and persuading the town of Leesburg to place hanging baskets of flowers on utility poles. The club monitors the county's sign ordinance which it lobbyed for and works with the county when amendments are necessary; this has happened only twice in the seventy years since it was adopted as part of the zoning ordinance. The club also is active in gardening activities such as horticulture, flower arranging, and flower shows.