Dyersburg Garden Club celebrates 30th anniversary

SPECIAL TO THE STATE GAZETTE

Organized by Amelia Wilkes in 1984, the club had many original members who were schoolteachers and needed an evening garden club. The current charter members are Ann Reaves and Amelia Wilkes.

Members present to celebrate the 30th Anniversary are left to right: Sara Wolfe, Mary Beth Sheppard, Nadia Browning, Meghan Cook, Ann Delaney, Beverly McCann, Beverlee Weatherly, Barbara Collier, Kathy Sellars, Beth Feith, Lyn Taylor, Amelia Wilkes, Ann Reaves, and Sherry Dunlap.

For the past 25 years, the club has been responsible for planting and maintaining the Blue Star Marker bed at Okeena Park, choosing plants to reflect each season of the year. The Blue Star marker is dedicated to past and present veterans.

After the annuals of zinnias, periwinkles, and celosia were removed, the bed was planted with violas for spring beauty by garden club members.

Through the years, the club has also furnished plants and helped landscape several parks, Transitions of Dyer County, Oakwood Community Living Center, Dyersburg State Community College, and Habitat for Humanity homes. A recent project for the club is collecting seeds to support the Seed Library housed in the Dyersburg Public Library where seeds can be taken for free and exchanged.

From 2003 until 2019, the club chaired the 10-foot flowering cross for Easter at Dyersburg First United Methodist Church. Two days were devoted to gathering a truckload of magnolia branches and stuffing the leaves into chicken wire encasing the cross. Easter morning the congregation donated cut flowers which garden club members and church youth positioned all over the cross. Every Easter, citizens lined up from all over town to pose with their families before the cross.

Members always participate in National Garden Week in June with a large sign displayed at Okeena Park; with the Mayor’s Proclamation; and with flower arrangements taken to nursing homes and libraries.

Working with youth, the club has had State and Deep South 3rd – 5th grade winners from Dyersburg Primary School in the Smokey Bear-Woodsy Owl poster contest; and State, Deep South, and a National winner in the Poetry Contest in 6th – 8th grades at Dyersburg Middle School. Both are projects of National Garden Clubs, Inc.

In 2015, Sara Wolfe organized and chaired Dyer County Recycles with a team of volunteers who gave programs and investigated recycling possibilities until COVID struck in 2020.

Under the leadership of Mary Beth Sheppard, Okeena Park has grown from a Level I Arboretum in 2005 to Level II in 2017. The club has planted numerous trees in memory of family, club

members, and others. For many years, Mary Beth, Barbara Collier, and Sherry Dunlap have chaired the Floral Department at the Dyer County Fair.

The current project, led by Beverlee Weatherly, is to establish a Tennessee Historical Marker along Frank Maynard Drive at the Dyersburg Primary School to commemorate Dyer County’s Peony Ridge Farm. This was the site of one of the largest peony farms in the world in the 1920s and 1930s. Box carloads of peonies were picked, packed, and shipped by train to Chicago where they were dispersed all over the world.