Community Projects
The Ulster Garden Club supports many community projects, both financially and through the volunteer work of our members. From maintaining the garden at the Senate House State Historic Site to raising funds for scholarships and establishing a horticulture lecture series, our members strive to make our community a better place to live.
Academy Green Park
The Ulster Garden Club, in partnership with the City of Kingston and community organizations, has undertaken and completed a number of projects at Academy Green Park, including a major landscape design and the purchase and installation of a new fountain. The Club keeps a watchful eye on the park, participating in an annual spring cleanup of the grounds, watering trees, pruning hedges and maintaining the fountain.
Elizabeth Gross Horticulture Lecture Series
Thanks to a bequest from Club member Betty Gross, an annual horticulture lecture series was endowed by the Club at SUNY Ulster in 2011. A diverse group of speakers have been brought to our community for the event, which is free and open to the public. Past speakers include:
2011 – JOAN DYE GUSSOW “Life and My Garden”
2012 – PATRICK CULLINA “NYC’s High Line Park: New Perspectives on Public Horticulture”
2013 – DARREL MORRISON “Landscape Design as Ecological Art”
2014 – STEPHEN BYRNES “Untermyer: From American’s Most Spectacular Garden to Greatest Forgotten Garden”
2015 – CAROL GRACIE “The Natural History of Spring Wildflowers: A Closer Look”
2016 – MARC HACHADOURIAN “Capturing Beauty: The Bizarre and Beautiful Natural History of Orchids”
2017 – RICK DARKE “Design & Stewardship of Living Gardens”
2018 – DR. PAUL ALAN COX “Ethnobotony & the Search for Cures”
2019 – KEN GREENE “The Art of the Seed”
2020 – DAVID CULP “A Year at Brandywine Cottage” CANCELLED due to coronavirus
Senate House Garden
For more than a century, the Ulster Garden Club has maintained the formal boxwood garden on the grounds of the Senate House State Historic Site in Kingston. On Tuesday mornings during the growing season, Club members can be found at the garden, digging, trimming, planting and weeding. Annual projects include saving and propagating marigold seeds for transplant to the garden, and every fall, members plant more than 400 tulip bulbs to provide a spectacular display the following Spring.
Scholarship
Beginning in 2014, in celebration of its one-hundred-year anniversary, the Ulster Garden Club has funded an annual scholarship for a SUNY Ulster student who is graduating from a two-year program and transferring to a four-year college with plans to continue in a field of study such as horticulture, floriculture, landscape design, forestry, city planning, land management, botany, conservation or environmental studies.
Memorial Tree Fund
The Memorial Tree Fund, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization created by, and affiliated with, the Ulster Garden Club. Its mission includes planting and caring for trees in public spaces. The organization works closely with the City of Kingston and a member of its Board serves on the City’s Tree Commission. Over the past 50 years, the Memorial Tree Fund has planted more than 1,000 street trees and has hired arborists to prune or remove ailing trees in public spaces throughout Ulster County.
