The Federated Garden Club of Maryland, District 1 records document the organization’s activities on the Eastern Shore of Maryland from 1930-2011 with the bulk of the records dating from 1987-2008. Regionally District 1 is comprised of Caroline, Cecil, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s, Somerset, Talbot, Wicomico and Worcester counties and their organized garden clubs. Activities including the semiannual meetings, special meetings, horticulture committee, and the newsletter are documented via meeting minutes recorded by the FGCMD secretary. Also included are scrapbooks compiled by the FGCMD historian that document the activities of the varying clubs through photographs and newspaper clippings.

Maryland was one of the first states to form a federated garden club, as part of the garden movement in the 1920s. Today, the Federated Garden Club of Maryland is comprised of 112 garden clubs and has approximately 4,000 members divided into five districts located regionally across the state from the Eastern Shore and Chesapeake Bay region to the mountains in the Western region. The FGCMD is a part of the Central Atlantic Region of National Garden Club, a nonprofit educational organization with over 200,000 members and 6,000 clubs.

Throughout the organization’s history the FGCMD has taken a key role in keeping Maryland roadways free of billboards, preserving and placing Blue Star Memorial Highway markers, and partnering with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in planting trees and shrubs to protect critical watershed areas.

The purpose of the organization is to encourage sound horticulture, conservation and design among its members as well as to educate the public through the beneficial use of native trees, shrubs, perennials, and wildflowers.

District 1 of the FGCMD was born out of several of the Eastern Shore and Chesapeake regional garden clubs with their acceptance into the Federated Garden Club of Maryland from the earliest admission in 1947 of the Queen Anne’s County Garden Club. Over the next twenty years, garden clubs throughout the Eastern Shore became members of the FGCMD. The individual garden clubs share a similar purpose, to stimulate interest in the citizens of their communities to grow flowers, to expand knowledge and to beautify their community properties.

Series I: Administrative Materials, documents the activities of the district’s garden clubs throughout the Eastern Shore, including Queen Anne’s County, Talbot County, Chestertown and Worcester County through meeting minutes and local garden club histories. There is a complete run of meeting minutes from 1966 through 2008.

Series II: Visual Materials, document the activities of the various clubs through scrapbooks which were assembled by district historians and include newspaper clippings, photographs, and printed ephemera.

Box 4 Addition: The Federated Garden Club of Maryland, District 1 was created from garden clubs around the Eastern Shore to provide awareness, and interest to residents in their communities to keep community properties in a tasteful presentation by utilizing native greenery and wildflowers. The records document the organization’s financial activities and events on the Eastern Shore from 1971-2011 with the bulk of the records dating from 1991-2007.

The records of the Federated Garden Club of Maryland, District 1 have been arranged into two series, Administrative Materials and Visual Materials.

Box 4 was added at a later date, materials are arranged by their function. 

Folders are listed by their location in each box; any given subject may be dispersed throughout the entirety of the collection.