Rockport Garden Club announces 2017 scholarship recipients
The Rockport Garden Club (RGC) has been in existence since the 1930s. The club started out with 18 members, and was formed as a branch of the Camden Garden Club. Through the years, the RGC members participated in many programs, just to name a few; collecting gypsy moth eggs, collecting and delivering "sunshine" baskets to shut-ins, spearheading the drive to save the Rockport Opera House and maintaining plants around our beloved Andre the Seal statue.
The club annual plant sales helped to provide funds for the beautification and maintenance of Rockport's public areas and most importantly, for scholarship awards. In December of 2000, the club launched their annual Holly Berry Fair which continues today to be a well received and fun-filled fund raiser to continue their good community work. Their challenge today is in keeping Rockport looking beautiful and colorful in all four seasons, to work and earn funds for scholarships, and to have fun and make friends while doing so. All of these activities brings out members'
imaginations, hard work, commitment to help educate it's members, their guests and community on our horticultural needs.
One of the club's main goal is to award scholarships for the pursuit of horticultural related or environmental related degrees. They are awarded annually in June to CHRHS graduating seniors and adults in our community who return to continuing education in these areas of study. The 2017 awards went to those applicants that proved curriculum suitability, academic record, community service, recommendations and level of need. The club was pleased to give two scholarships (the first in 2015)to Addie Drinkwater enrolled in Environmental Studies and Business administration at St. Michael's. The second award went to Grace Olsen, studying Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Studies at Green Mountain College. The third scholarship went to Max Pushaw in a Parks and Forest Management program at Unity College The fourth award recipient is Jaclyn Gilson, who also received an award from the RGC in 2015, and is studying Environmental Science at Simmons. (Not Pictured)
For more information on RGC’s scholarship program, call 593-0744. The club’s monthly meetings are held at the Rockport Opera House on the first Thursday of most months. The meetings are educational and interesting, with guest speakers presenting programs on various horticultural subjects. The club would like to point out that garden clubs are not for women only, RGC has a few male members and more than twenty in their Men's Auxiliary. For more info on the RGC please call 354-6558.
