Fern Garden Club - The Beginning
Our Story
The Fern Garden Club was started in April 1950 under the leadership of Mrs. Charles Little. Twenty ladies met at Lutz Lake Fern School which was located at the corner of Gunn Highway and Lutz Lake Fern Road. Hence the club was named the Fern Garden Club. After the school burned in 1963, the club moved to the Keystone Civic Center. We remained at the Civic Center up until their renovation in 2020. We are now meeting at the Keystone United Methodist Church on Race Track Rd. We were members of the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs from 1963 until 1996 when our members voted to withdraw from the federation and become an independent club.
Based in Odessa, the Fern Garden Club serves Hillsborough, and surrounding counties. Our club is not just dedicated to ferns, as many think, but a club that has an overall interest in gardening and nature. Our monthly meetings are informative, with demonstrations, presentations from master gardeners, cooperative extension officers and community experts. Topics range from current garden trends to gardens of the past, and everything in between. This includes composting, edible landscaping, birds, butterflies, backyard wildlife and much more. We enjoy learning about plants, nature, and wildlife. We all love our field trips to nearby gardens as well as our members’ gardens. At our monthly meetings, we share plants, ideas, and friendship with each other.
Each year we have a very successful plant sale featuring hundreds of plants. All our plants are propagated and grown by club members with the proceeds going for both various charitable organizations and operational expenses.
The objectives of the club are to promote an interest in gardening, its design and management, to cooperate in the protection of wildflowers, birds, and native plants, and to encourage civic planting and beautification. The Fern Garden Club is a garden club with strong roots and is still growing stronger. Our goal as stated in our Fern Garden Club Prayer is to “make our homes and community a joyous place in which to live”.
~ Jo Leonard and Barbara Aderhold
Fern Garden Club Prayer
Oh Father of all loveliness, teach us to understand the joy of color, harmony of form, the beauty of proportion. To know the reality of art and nature. To be content with what we have, but not satisfied until our homes reflect the best in ourselves, and to appreciate the simple joys of acquiring and sharing, so that we may make our homes and community a joyous place in which to live.