LBI Garden Club Members receive national award

On Thursday afternoon, Sept. 13, members of The Garden Club of Long Beach Island presented Edith Duff Gwinn Garden committee chairwomen Peg Felix, Betty Frey and Cathy Sutton with a Perennial Bloom Award from the Central Atlantic Region of National Garden Clubs, Inc. The honor recognized the three women for their exceptional work in the local Eden, which they have headed for the past 14 years.

“Every year we say, ‘That’s it,’" joked Felix. “But we always come back. We love the garden.”

Photo by Ryan Morrill

Those who attended the town’s old, one-room schoolhouse – now the Barnegat Light Museum on Central Avenue at Fifth Street – used the outside courtyard as a playground. After the schoolhouse closed, the courtyard became an alluring garden adopted by garden club founders Edith Duff Gwinn and Frances Selover.

In 1998, Felix, Frey and Sutton, who had been members of the club for only a few months to a couple of years, began managing the preservation of the garden. Every Monday morning from May through October, at least one if not all of the women is outside in the garden, leading other members who show up to help with landscaping duty.

“We tell all the worker bees what needs to be done,” Sutton said with a laugh. “We do routine maintenance on Mondays. We cut off all the dead stuff. And then next week there’s a whole new batch of dead stuff we need to cut off. It’s always nonstop maintenance,” she explained.

Many years ago, the garden was decorated with numbered stakes that corresponded with the title of the plant it stood near. Plant descriptions could be found written down in a book, kept inside the museum. Now the garden is in constant reorder, with new plants and flowers interchanged every season. Keeping up with the numbers of plants is just too trying a task to mark every one.

An array of annual flowers planted every year, including marigolds, petunias and geraniums to name a few, can be seen throughout the garden during the spring and summer months. The variety of colorful flowers planted in the garden is always different every year.

Plenty of flowers and evergreens can be found in front of the museum on Central Avenue. Five years ago, the garden club raised enough funds to redo the front area, which formerly was a dirt patch many visitors used for parking their cars. Now the front yard is bedecked with beautiful plants, including knockout roses and lilies, alongside a winding walkway.

The pathway leads back around most of the garden, which was finished in four installments and funded through the sale of engraved pieces. The other portion of the garden has maintained its natural trail of pine needles and soil.

Perennials can be found throughout the garden all year long. Witch hazel trees, bamboo, heather and bearded iris are just some of the many beautiful plants that thrive throughout the fall and winter seasons.

“In the springtime, the garden is alive with flowers. But anyone who doesn’t come up to the garden in a snowstorm is missing out,” said Frey. “You have to see it. The witch hazel, heather, kale, cabbage: It’s all in full bloom. It’s beautiful,” she emphasized.

Photo by Ryan Morrill

Benches donated by longtime members are stationed near a compass designed in honor of Selover. A wrap-around seat, surrounding a giant tree, was dedicated in remembrance of 9/11 and is now a perfect place to sit and relax amid the flora. But many of the club’s members prefer sitting upon a large rock situated in the middle of the garden, while sipping coffee and iced tea during their 10:30 break on “Monday maintenance” mornings.

Copper birdbaths, picnic tables, a fish pond filled with goldfish, an herb garden marked by seashells, a trickling water fountain dedicated to everyone who has worked in the garden, a spherical sundial donated by Selover’s daughter-in-law, and a tar pot replica are just some of many wondrous things found among the variety of plants and flowers in the garden.

The club also maintains the garden at the Beach Haven Public Library. The annual Holiday Tour of Homes on Long Beach Island will be held on Thursday, Dec. 13, to help raise money for the club and the scholarships it offers to local school students. For more information, visit thegardencluboflbi.com.


This article was published in The SandPaper.