Conservation projects

The Garden Club of Mount Desert has focused on conservation since its earliest years, and one of our current goals is to have a conservation speaker at one meeting every summer.

Club conservation projects over the years have included:

Support for the publication of Edgar T. Wherry’s Wild Flowers of Mt. Desert Island in 1928.
Collaboration in planting and caring for Victory Gardens and canning garden produce for the island community during the war years in the 1940s.
A Tree Symposium, and a lecture on the Rising Ocean Level — both events open to the public without entrance fees.
Support and ongoing volunteer work at Charlotte Rhoades Park and Butterfly Garden in Southwest Harbor.
Cooperative sponsorship of the 2010 publication The Plants of Acadia National Park, which won the Garden Club of America’s Sarah Francis Chapman Medal in 2012.
Participation in GCA’s Garden History & Design Program in which special MDI gardens are researched, documented and photographed for the Archives of American Gardens at the Smithsonian Institution.

These conservation organizations have captured the interest of many of our members.

Partners for Plants

GCA clubs can cooperate with Federal, State and Local entities to remove invasive plants and inventory rare plants on state and other significant city and county lands. Most projects involve working with professional botanists, and funds are available from GCA to help cover expenses.

At the suggestion of member Elise Felton, the Garden Club of Mount Desert initiated a Partners for Plants project in 2004 monitoring rare plants and eradicating non-native invasive species in Acadia National Park. Club member Elly Andrews has continued the coordination of these efforts in conjunction with Acadia National Park, Friends of Acadia and an outside professional botanist. This work is ongoing, and Acadia National Park values the data provided. The research has not only monitored existing rare plant sites but has uncovered new sites as well. It has both prevented the spread of invasives and tested various techniques of accomplishing this. Additionally, as members of our club and other volunteers have continued this Partners for Plants project, they have become vested in the project, and share their knowledge and enthusiasm for conservation with others.