50th Annual Meeting of the Garden Club of America

The Botany and Horticulture Library has in its collection Garden Club of America (GCA) booklets from 1924 to 2003, with information on the organization's annual meeting. This one celebrates the GCA's fiftieth anniversary in 1963. The book lists the meeting program and officers, and includes a short paragraph on each of the houses and gardens on the garden tours. In this book, two places listed on the tours are of particular interest: Cliveden, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, was built in 1763 by Benjamin Chew, and remained in the Chew family for seven generations. Samuel Chew, who is listed as the host in this booklet, was the last family member to own the house. In 1972, the Chew family transferred ownership to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Another property on this GCA tour has also changed ownership since 1963. Mt. Cuba, owned by Mr. and Mrs. Lammot DuPont Copeland, is now Mt. Cuba Center, a botanical garden in Delaware devoted to the conservation of mid-Atlantic native plants. In our library, these booklets have been used by landscape architects to document information about particular properties.