gail o’gorman · women had secured the right to vote a few years before with the rati-fication of...

Gail O’Gorman

The Garden Club of Barrington leads a precise producing of Botanica, a Garden Club of America Major Flower Show hosted at the Chicago Botanic Garden this coming June. Chairwoman Gail O’Gorman and the six Garden Club of America’s Chicago area member clubs gathered on February 9 to continue the planning process of this significant American garden event. Quintessential Barrington was offered an unprecedented opportunity to go behind these closed doors to share what it takes to deliver a Show of Summer.

When It Comes to Creating Beauty, the Garden Club of Barrington Shows the Way

B y L i s a s ta m O s • P h O t O s B y J u L i e L i n n e k i n

Walk in the Garden

QBarr ing ton.com | Quintessential Barrington • 95

In front, from left: Kay Schueppert, Dicie

Hansen, Pat Ballot, Joan Wolfgram and Gail

O’Gorman. In back, from left: Maryjo Garre,

Wanita Lamkey and Connie Bischof. Mem-

bers of the Garden Club of Barrington led

an active role in the planning meeting. They

are pictured in the Krehbiel Gallery at the

Chicago Botanic Garden – one of the many

spaces available for exhibits. The respon-

sibility to plan and organize the Show of

Summer rotates. This year, it is the Garden

Club of Barrington’s turn to coordinate ef-

forts with the Garden Guild of Winnetka, the

Lake Forest Garden Club, the Garden Club of

Evanston, the Kenilworth Garden Club and

the Winnetka Garden Club.

American gardens clubs come in all varieties – some are mainly social, while others focus more seriously on the art of gardening, horticulture and conservation. The Garden Club of Barrington (GCB) enjoys all of these aspects of membership. And this year, they will showcase their impressive leadership and event planning skills as well as the precise and beautiful entries of their members. Founded in a charming yet different era, the GCB has a living legacy that dates back to the early 20th century.

The year was 1925. Women had secured the right to vote a few years before with the rati-fication of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. F. Scott Fitzger-ald published his literary classic, The Great Gatsby, painting an elegant picture of life that juxtaposed the prosperity of the Roaring ‘20s against the restraints of the Prohibition era. Calvin Coolidge was elected and he was the first American president to have an inaugura-tion broadcast by radio to the American public. Barbara Bush, Margaret Thatcher and Mike Douglas were born that year. The Chrysler Corporation was founded by Walter Percy Chrys-ler following Henry Ford’s decades of perfecting the mass assembly of autos for the middle class. And somewhere in Barrington there was a small group of women who assembled to discuss the preliminaries of starting a garden club.

Nellie Hammond, a historian for the earliest years of the Garden Club of Barrington, recorded the first 15 years of the club’s history that was commissioned by its president, Mrs. Frank A. Hecht, Jr., and published in 1940. Here, she recounts the formative years:

96 • Quintessential Barrington | QBarr ing ton.com

Gail O’Gorman leads a planning meeting for

Show of Summer with more than 20 represen-

tatives from the six Chicago area Garden Club

of America member clubs, as well as with staff

from the Chicago Botanic Garden. She attended

the 2008 show planning sessions to prepare

for the 2011 show. A focused agenda called on

committee chairwomen to report on topics

ranging from show judging, awards, a preview

party, speakers, staging, technology and many

more. The Garden Club of America has strict

rules and procedures for their flower shows.

There are seven divisions that any GCA member

in the United States may apply for. They are:

flower arrangement, horticulture, photogra-

phy, botanical jewelry, conservation, education

and garden history and design. The focus of

this year’s show, Botanica, is on plants, plant

families, their evolution, their growth and the

beauty derived from their use in arrangements,

gardens and photographs.

document their successes and failures. One of the earliest entries recalls the first official tree planting:

It seems pathetic that a Club that felt the desire to be of some civic benefit should have the first village tree planting so unsuccessful. A lovely evergreen tree, picked for its size, its uniformity and its general beauty, and costing the magnificent sum of $100.00 was planted on the lawn of the Public School in the fall of 1927. But owing to circumstances unforeseen, the tree died, and Mr. Hill, always so generous, replaced it the following year. This second tree had better care, but could not survive either, so no bit of green marks the place of our first planting. It must remain “Just a Memory.”

In the mid-1930s, the GCB had a history of participating in events with the Garden Club of Illinois and the National Council of Garden Clubs, but members held a keen interest in the gold standard of national organizations – the Garden Club of America (GCA). The GCA had four member clubs in northern Illinois and the membership of what was a local standalone club in Barrington saw advantages of being affiliated with the national CGA. Inter-est was sparked when members from other CGA clubs visited Barrington. Those other clubs went on to guide and sponsor the local Barrington club for membership. The process of qualifying had begun with meetings and garden visits around Barrington Hills with the sponsors from the Lake Geneva and Lake Forest CGA member clubs. In January, 1940 the Garden Club of Bar-rington learned that it was elected into membership to the Garden Club of America. There was excitement for Barrington members to attend the CGA annual meeting the following May:

The annual meeting in Baltimore from May seventh to tenth gave us the opportunity of being a part of their activity from the very start. Mrs. Hecht,

The Garden Club of Barrington offers to an ever changing membership, a part in the development of a landscape of rolling country dotted with lakes and oak wooded areas, a legacy of beautiful gardens and attractive homes , and a promise of an ever widening interest and activity.

Perhaps the greatest attainment of the Club so far has been its secure estab-lishment in the community as a social and civic organization of high praise, and we are confident that the future of The Garden Club of Barrington will be secure and full of interesting adventure as history repeats itself. We are con-fident also, that as puzzling problems of country life are met and conquered through organization and with the help of both science and art, our Garden Club women may gain a better realization of the aim and end of all our Club effort – the fuller understanding and the greater accomplishment of the joy of country living.

One of the club’s main purposes was to have educational programs to explore various topics. The membership, limited to 35 people, held their meetings at the Barrington Hills Country Club and eventually moved them to members’ homes. Guest speakers were brought in and included some familiar local names, such as David Hill, founder of the Hill Nursery in Dundee, Ill., who spoke in 1926. Other speakers included professors from the University of Chicago, landscape architects, naturalists, and John Bell of the Bell Apple Orchards, formerly in Lake Zurich, who was a member of the club. Club excursions were also popular. Members studied nature away from home in Lake Forest, Wheaton, Lake Geneva, Kenilworth and the rock gardens of Glencoe.

Gatherings to develop the newly-formed club in Barrington revolved around programs and activity goals. Papers were written by club members to


our president, together with the two women chosen by our board … were to be delegates to that meet-ing. The three delegates, Mrs. Hecht, Jr., Mrs. Work and Mrs. Reichman went to Baltimore and found the annual meeting of the Garden Club of America a most inspiring and stimulating experience. It was an opportunity to learn how east meets west and north meets south, in this business of gardening, and a chance to see gardens that have stood a century at least, testifying to the excellence of garden effort in early America.

From that First GCa meetinG to runninG a Flower show

The GCA Show of Summer started out in 1976 as the Chicago Flower and Garden Show held at the McCormick Place. In 1980, the event moved to the Chicago Botanic Garden and was renamed the Show of Summer. It was held every year until the early ‘90s when it shifted to every other year, and now, every three years. The Garden Club of Barrington was show organizer in 1984, 1985 and 1994 – and now.

GCA guidelines for the event are precise – from entry deadlines to the proper identification of plant materials. Care is taken to support conservation in plant choices and to even remove invasive or diseased plants from the show. Show judging takes into consideration design, creativity, interpretation distinction and conformance in a point system. In addition to plant exhibits, art classifications are part of the program, including photography, illustration and botanical jewelry.

From left: Dicie Hansen, Wanita

Lamkey, Joan Wolfgram, and Kay

Schueppert. Dicie Hansen, co-chair-

woman of the Horticulture division,

presents a model of the various

display cube shapes that exhibitors

will use for the horticulture club

challenge. She reviewed the paint

color choices for the display cubes

and discussed delivery logistics for

show set-up.


From left: Mary Lu O’Malley, Garden

Club of Evanston; Lois Ware, Gar-

den Guild of Winnetka; Debbie Ross,

Garden Guild of Winnetka; Karen

Stensrud, Lake Forest Garden Club;

Prue Beidler, Lake Forest Garden

Club: Sue Cozzens, Kenilworth

Garden Club;

Preston Jansing, Lake Forest Garden

Club; and from the Garden Club of

Barrington, Maryjo Garre, Pat Bal-

lot and Gail O’Gorman.

Every detail of the show was

reviewed, including several club

and new member challenges and a

children’s class.

Gail was born in Granite City, Ill., and spent her early years in St. Louis. She moved to the Chicago area and lived in the Western Suburbs and later attended Purdue University where she was a math and physics major, and a member of Delta Gamma. After college, Gail went into information technol-ogy as a computer programmer for Shell Oil and later, United Air Lines. She married a second time in 1981 and she and her husband moved to Barrington Hills following years of job transfers around the country. She was widowed in 2002 and keeps closely in touch with her three step-children and six grandchildren. She also has a Siberian Husky to keep her company. In addition to finding joy in her gardening, Gail enjoys travel, reading and the company of family and friends.

The next time the Garden Club of Barrington will coordinate the Show of Summer will be in 2029. The six Chicago area CGA garden clubs rotate the obligation every three years. Gail sat through the 2008 planning sessions to learn the ropes of producing a major CGA flower show in the United States. Having skills from a career in information technology, consulting and business reengineering with major corporations comes in handy. She led the February planning meeting for Show of Summer with ease.

Operations for the Show of Summer cover every detail from receiving exhibitor applications to issues with finance and underwriting. The last event had more than 10,000 visitors, and overall at-tendance in general at the Chicago Botanic Garden is climbing. The committee status reports and discussions were delivered with precision – a style you’d expect from gardeners with an eye for detail in their work. The no-nonsense meeting was interrupted with laughs and an evident camaraderie

Gail o’Gorman Gets to work


between the clubs in attendance. Members agreed that the best and most fun job at the upcoming show is that of clerking. Working closely with show judges up to award time, the clerks are “in the know” about the contenders for awards and what the behind-the-scenes chatter is all about.

a livinG leGaCy

It’s a significant undertaking to produce the Show of Summer, yet it is safe to say that before, during and after this event, the members of all the participating clubs will be busy at home with their own gardens and container pots even while taking on this challenge. And today’s members of the Garden Club of Barrington would likely find a common spirit with those who founded their club more than 80 years ago – with this final report from Nellie Hammond:

We have members who have planted extensively of nearly every tree and shrub that can be grown in Northern Illinois, others whose varieties of lilacs, for instance, outreach the best known nurseries, some whose interest in wild life preservation and in conserving natural resources is a well known story. We have gardens of unusual beauty and design, farm areas that interest women as well as men and members whose interest in photography is outstanding. Greenhouse and conservatory flower culture interests others, one in particular whose collections of geraniums, begonias and cacti have won her many honors. Others have grown special things out of doors.

So after all, a garden club is made up of individuals and in our different effort is variety and charm. Mr. Richardson Wright used to say, “Gardening is not the whole of life, it is a necessary part of a full life” – so with these words … we may turn to our gardens again where miracles await us – the wonder of bud and bloom that never quite lose their mystery. So put History aside. This has been written that it may re-fresh your minds concerning days that are past, but out in your garden the unfolding flower has a greater purpose. It holds the future in its cup, the essence of your coming garden activities down many happy days.

A n e x A m pl e of A c u t f l ow e r A r r A ng e m e n t

f rom A pr e v iou s show.

t h i s di spl Ay of su c c u l e n t s wAs show n At t h e 2 0 0 8 Show of Sum m e r .


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t hAt i s su r rou n de d b y bl Ac k be r ry l i ly l e Av e s

A n d j u n i pe r be r r i e s .

A s Ag e l e A f be f or e A n d A f t e r i t i s e m be l l i sh e d

w i t h A g ol d l e A f f i n i sh .

t h i s st e m i s A p oppy f l ow e r p od

w i t h A ddi t ionA l l e Av e s g lu e d on . t h e “ru bi e s

A n d pe A r l s” A r e m A de f rom pe ppe rc or n s .

The Show of Summer presents beautiful and unique exhibits.

Pictured here are examples of hand-made, all-plant

material jewelry (by Garden Club of Barrington member Pat Ballot) that you will see at the show.

“Show of summer” Beauty


Located in Glencoe, the Chicago Botanic Garden (CBG) is a living museum covering 385 acres that

is open all year long. In 2010, the CBG set an all-time attendance record for the second year in a row,

with 904,864 visits, representing a 2 percent increase over 2009. The CBG is one of the most visited

public gardens in the United States and is a preeminent center for plant conservation, science

research and education. It is only one of 17 public gardens accredited by the

American Association of Museums, recognizing its living collection of 2.4 million plants.

• • • • •

The Garden is open daily from 8 a.m. to sunset from Sept. 2 through June 5. Summer hours are

7 a.m. to 9 p.m. from Memorial Day through Labor Day. For more information, visit www.chicagobotanic.org.

hol i dAy f e st i v i t i e s A r e on e of m A n y w i n t e r Ac t i v i t i e s AvA i l A bl e At t h e c h ic Ag o b otA n ic g A r de n .

The Show never EndsThe Chicago Botanic Garden plays host to beautiful

displays throughout the year.


c l o c k w i se stA rt i ng A b ov e :

t h e e l i z A bet h h u be rt m A l ot t

jA pA n e se g A r de n i n t h e fA l l .

• • •

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jA pA n e se g A r de n At su n r i se .

• • •

ro se g A r de n .

• • •

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gail o’gorman · women had secured the right to vote a few years before with the rati-fication of...

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