Time Again: Vashon garden clubs

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, March 24, 2026

The way islanders think about gardens has changed dramatically over the past several centuries. At the end of the 20th and first part of the 21st centuries, the concept of a garden is shifting back to a more inclusive view that includes the natural spaces that the Swift Water People, saw as “gardens” as well and the more formal traditional flower gardens that characterized much of 20th century Vashon.

Peg Staeheli is a retired landscape architect who, with her husband John Troup, is engaged in a 20-year forest/garden restoration project at their home in Northilla, on Maury Island.

This concept of gardening is a far cry from the 1952 photograph of Mrs. Robert J. Russell and Mrs. Margaret E. Bard at the Vashon Island Harvest Festival Flower Show. Together these photographs represent this shifting concept of what is a garden.

This first stage of gardening on the island survived for millennia until the Swift Water People were removed to Fox Island in 1855 by the territorial government and ultimately relocated to the Puyallup Reservation.

The second stage of gardening on Vashon focused on horticulture — managing, growing and selling crops in the expanding Tacoma and Seattle markets. The Chautauqua, founded in 1888 on Vashon and located at what is now Ellisport, was known as one of the garden spots of Puget Sound.

More important to the emerging island economy, however, was the organization of the Vashon Horticultural Club in 1892, the first in the state, and the Fruit Growers Horticultural Society in 1900. Both organizations sought to promote island growers, organize their marketing and share information about plant varieties and farming practices.

By the 1920s, the third stage of Vashon gardens began to emerge, as islanders turned more toward beautification, ornamental plants and flowers. Large show gardens were established at Twickenham, now Wingehaven Park, and at the Mukai Gardens.

Less elaborate gardens emerged in Burton with the Burton Improvement Club in 1927, the Burton Garden Club in 1928, the first Burton Flower Show in 1929 and the Vashon Lily Club in 1930. Though none survived the Great Depression, the idea was planted and would flourish in the following decades.

The beginnings are a bit murky because not all the records have been preserved, but we do know the Vashon Garden Club was formed in 1945 with 80 members and a treasury reserve of $8.18. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were two Vashon Garden Clubs, one in Burton and one in Vashon. In 1952, the two groups merged into what is now the Vashon-Maury Island Garden Club.

During this fourth stage of Vashon gardening, the club held its first plant sale in 1948 and began taking part in the annual festival parade with floats and walking groups.

This post-World War II era was a creative time for the Vashon-Maury Island Garden Club. Flower arranging was such an important focus in the earlier days of the club that, in 1952, members were required to bring three flower arrangements to each meeting, with a fine of 25 cents per arrangement if they did not.

The club also developed tours of island gardens and engaged in beautification efforts at Inspiration Point, the Island Club, now Ober Park, the new Nike base and other public spaces around the island.

A shift in American culture and gardening developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and the Garden Club shifted as well, moving away from a focus on flowers and formal flower arrangements.

This fifth stage of gardening on Vashon led gardeners to embrace more native plants, less formal and more naturalistic gardens and a growing emphasis on environmental sensitivity in the use of plants, pesticides and fertilizers. Earth Day and the emergence of the Island Earth Faire reflected this changing cultural landscape, and the Vashon Garden Club began to change as well.

The sixth stage of gardening on Vashon emerged in the 2000s and saw a flourishing of the Garden Club as it embraced a more inclusive vision of gardens, from structured formal gardens to naturalistic informal ones.

The 2012 production of Terry’s Hershey’s “Through the Garden Gate” and the Vashon Heritage Museum exhibit “Passion in the Dirt: Sixty Years of Plant Lust and Flower Power,” developed by the Garden Club to celebrate its 60th anniversary, both capture the changing landscape of gardening and the changing character of the Vashon-Maury Island Garden Club.

In the middle of the 2020s, the Garden Club has undergone another transition and is now in the seventh stage of gardening on Vashon, represented by the effort to identify Vashon as a wildlife habitat community.

While originally not a Garden Club project, the club has embraced the idea of creating and certifying wildlife-friendly landscapes on island properties.

As Garden Club historian Hunter Davis noted, “Since the wobbly beginnings in the 1940s, the Garden Club has been a place of fun, friendship and festivities. From the gloved and hatted ladies’ tea party atmosphere of the 1950s to today’s more casual potlucks that are inclusive of all, the focus remains on enjoying and supporting each other as well plants and gardens. In addition, the Garden Club continues its tradition of charitable support. From donations to Norwegian orphanages at the club’s inception, to today’s wreath making for shut-in neighbors, the club embraces the sense of giving and flowering within that happens when serving others.”

This long history has seen the Vashon-Maury Island Garden Club support gardeners and their passion for gardens in a wide variety of ways.

Flower arranging demonstrations, flower contests, community beautification efforts, community garden awards, support for education through grants and scholarships, garden tours, participation in the annual Strawberry Festival, an annual plant sale and a variety of social activities all work to enhance fellowship among its members.

Bruce Haulman is an island historian. Terry Donnelly is an island photographer. This article is part of their ongoing “Time & Again” series of history article in The Beachcomber.