The Medfield Garden Club is 85 years old this year, and the club is celebrating its anniversary in various ways during 2018.
Nancy Tella and Rebecca Stephenson enjoy a game of ring toss.
On Monday, July 16, the Garden Club celebrated its 85th anniversary picnic with the Fairbanks Garden Club at the 1636 Fairbanks House in Dedham with tours of the house, historic games, creative garden hats, and a summer buffet filled with 1930s recipes.
Idella Cole Hussey founded the Medfield Garden Club on June 21, 1933. Idella was a Fairbanks. Her maternal grandmother was Eliza Fairbanks, a descendant of George Fairbanks (second son of Johnathan and Grace, the builders of the house). That summer, on August 16, 1933, Idella took the original ten founders of the Medfield Garden Club, Edna Huebner, Myra Leighton, Kate Tucker, Mary and Nettie Hamant, Beatrice Bangs, Lillian Kingsbury, Olive Spender, Grace Bridge, and Idella's mother, Abbie Turner Cole, to the Fairbanks House for a summer picnic and outing.
The Garden Club's anniversary picnic was a commemoration of the gift of those original ten Medfield women - a garden club, created at the height of the Depression, that has survived, flourished, and beautified the community for 85 years.
