Noon luncheon meetings are held on the first two Tuesdays of each month, at Charlie Brown's Steakhouse in Chatham Township. Breakfast meetings are held at 8:00 AM on the last two or three Tuesdays of each month. Breakfast meetings are held at Charlie Brown’s Steakhouse in Chatham Township. Guests are always welcomed to attend our Tuesday meetings. COME JOIN US

Thursday

Kiwanis April 16 Program: Mary Keselica spoke on the "Town and Country Garden Club of the Chathams"

Marty Sechehay (right in photo) introduced Mary Keselica (left) of “Town and Country Garden Club of the Chathams” at the April 16 Kiwanis breakfast meeting at Charlie Brown’s in Chatham. She gave an overview of the club, its history, how it is involved in civic beautification in Chatham, and other gardening activities.  She noted that the club worked with Kiwanis to plant six cherry trees behind the Chatham Township High School in 1964.

The club started in 1952. One of the founding members was Sally Vaughan, mother of the former Mayor Nelson Vaughan. Eighteen women with a common interest in gardening and the environment got together and spent most of the first year focusing on flower arrangement. Then they worked with the schools to create a junior garden club and worked with Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts. They are interested in the environment and participated in the work to save the Great Swamp from becoming a jetport. Flower arrangements were made for local convalescent homes. Early on, their club joined the Garden Club of New Jersey.

In the 1960’s there were almost a dozen garden clubs in the Chathams and there was a Garden Council which coordinated the work everyone was doing around town, including an anti-litter campaign.

Town and Country designed and installed landscaping for the land around the little red schoolhouse. The Chatham Women’s Club recently provided a grant to permit the Town and Country Garden Club to update the landscaping, which has been ravaged over the years by deer.

In recent years they have maintained planters holding flowers on Main Street. They went to the Chatham Council to ask that a cleanup be done in Chatham and that led to the April 20, 2013 Chatham Spring Clean day. The club will spruce up the memorial in front of the Chatham Library this year and Rotary Park next year.

They decorate the little red schoolhouse for Christmas every year. They take floral arrangements to the VA Hospital in Lyons four times a year. They maintain the large planters in front of the Senior Center. They decorate the Chatham Library Christmas tree and the little one in the Children’s Room. They support the Raptor Trust every year with plantings and donated items. They participated in the Community Garden under the power lines in Chatham and will continue as it moves to a new site. Funds and grants are needed to support their many projects.

Today, they are a club of about 30 members who meet at the little red schoolhouse for lunch, desert and a program. Guests are invited to join them on the second Wednesday of the month - September through June (please let a member know you are coming). Mary offered to work with Kiwanis on another project.

Kiwanis members and guests enthusiastically applauded Mary’s interesting presentation about the Town and Country Garden Club of the Chathams. See Chatham Patch article for more info: http://chatham.patch.com/articles/garden-club-spruces-up-borough-planters

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