SGC May news and notes
BY KATHY PICKENS
The Greenville Standard
The Sasanqua Garden Club (SGC) held its May meeting at Beeland Park. The hostesses were Glenn Cooper, Jennie Nearing, Janice Meadows, and Staci Anderson.
These ladies brought spring inside with enormous, eye-catching crepe flowers in shades of orange, peach, pink, and white. Their menu included finger sandwiches, veggies, nuts, and baskets of brightly decorated flower cookies on wooden stems.
SGC President Steadham McGowin welcomed members and introduced new members (Patricia Ballew, Emaleigh DeShields, Beverly Mullins, Lynn Nielson, Bethany Norman, Kim Owens, and Casey Rogers) and honored guests (Mayor Jae’Ques Brown, Councilmen Bryan Reynolds, Brandon Smith, and Joseph West, mayoral staff members Olby Bedgood and Brittany Blankenship, and the Butler County Historical and Genealogical Society’s Claudia Lewis).
SGC Chaplain Jean Hancock then opened with prayer and was followed by a greeting from the mayor.
Mayor Brown congratulated the club on their many accomplishments with the Beeland Park Camellia Gardens. He sees the gardens as a natural tourist attraction that can be marketed statewide and beyond. “We see the vision,” said Brown. “We believe in the vision. Your labor is not in vain.”
Nedra Crosby next introduced the May speaker, Bobby Green. Crosby first contacted Green at the behest of local camellia enthusiast Barbara Middleton.
Green, a second generation camellia nurseryman and owner of the oldest nursery in Alabama, is a world-class designer and has been the “imagineer” of the Beeland Park Camellia Gardens.
Green, though technically retired, continues to offer advice and direction on how the city can combine recreation development, tourism development, and economic development with Greenville’s proximity to the new Forever Wild development and the Bratram Trail, along with its treasures in Beeland Park and at Sherling Lake.
Green said that he feels a close bond with Greenville because of its people and the city’s authenticity.
He praised the Sasanqua Garden Club for the progress made at Beeland from its beginnings as his rough Google Maps sketch to a lovely rendering by artist TK Pouncy to the actual garden it is today complete with a softscape path, brick pavers, restored picnic tables, plant specimen labels and QR codes, and a grand arch set into iconic columns. “You completed our five-year plan in a little over two years,” remarked Green.
As to next steps for Greenville, Green recommended that when the city updates the existing architecture at Sherling Lake Campground, that the classic, nostalgic features like the signage and octagonal office building not be changed as these are desirable tourism draws.
Additionally, Green is intrigued by the Rev. Frank W. Ward figurative monument in Magnolia Cemetery.
He suggested that efforts be made to restore the Ward-Nicholas store at the corner of Harrison and Parmer Streets, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1986.
Green addressed the plans for an amphitheater across from the Depot. “You’ve got a drainage problem through there, and you don’t want to just dump that water on your neighbors,” pointed out Green. He suggested incorporating the water to develop the area around the theater as a “Black Belt prairie ecosystem.”
The program ended with a question-and-answer session followed by the “passing of the gavel” to new president April Sherling.
Lastly, it was announced that in honor of outgoing president McGowin, a Camellia japonica ‘Sea Foam’ will be planted in the gardens.
This cultivar is often called “picture perfect” because of its large, showy, white blooms that are amazingly symmetrical and almost appear as porcelain.
