Fort Worth Garden Club Toasts 100 Years of Service, Civic Influence
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As one enthusiastic attendee said, the Fort Worth Garden Club’s recent gala to mark the esteemed club’s 100th anniversary is “all anyone is talking about.”
The beautiful outdoor celebration, co-chaired by club members Molly Jones, Michelle Marlow, and Debbie Reynolds, marked the club’s centennial at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. It’s a site beloved for decades by garden members whose own mission statement includes the phrase “to provide support for the Fort Worth Botanic Garden.”
Garden Party
The evening opened on April 18 like a well‑tended garden — lush, green, and lovelier than anyone dared to predict, especially after a morning of rain, wind, and 50‑degree chill. The black-tie, bloom‑filled gala blended 100 years of civic pride with Southern garden‑party charm. Members and their guests, some donning stoles over their gowns, arrived at a venue awash in spring green — the color of the evening.
Guides, dressed as flower-adorned garden fairies, ushered the 400 attendees to the botanic garden’s rose shelter for cocktails. Then, later guests were led to a white marquee where round tables set with green linens, topped with massive floral centerpieces of green hydrangeas (2,300 in total!), green and white parrot tulips, white lilies, and cherry blossom branches. Of course, this being a garden club with all sorts of experts, master gardeners, and smart women, the arrangements were created by its members.
A dinner catered by Wolfgang Puck Corporation followed, with major donors served on plates featuring the artistic rendering of Anne Marie Bratton of the botanical garden, an image used on the printed invitations, too. Bratton, the club’s 100th-year president, award-winning painter, and the only daughter of former NFL commissioner Pete Rozell, welcomed the sold-out crowd and present Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker with the coffee table book, Forces of Nature, commissioned to document the club’s 100 years of service.
“Being a member of the Fort Worth Garden Club has been such a meaningful part of my work as a Realtor,” said Virginia Durham with Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s. She attended with a client, the incoming club president, Ronda Stucker. “It gives me a deeper appreciation for the beauty and character of Fort Worth, and there’s nothing better than sharing the stunning Fort Worth Botanic Garden with clients. It truly helps them fall in love with the city.”
Honoring Founders
The entire gala honored generations of members, beginning with the optimistic, determined founders who held their first meeting on April 1, 1926 — just six years after women won the right to vote. A century later, today’s 675 members, with another 200 waiting to join, are celebrating all the club has accomplished.
There was plenty to celebrate, too. During the past hundred years, members have shaped the city’s landscape — planting trees, improving parks, advocating for the environment and rewarding beautification work. The botanic garden has long been a centerpiece of their work, from helping restore the iconic Rose Garden to supporting the creation of the Japanese Garden and now the new Baker Martin Family Garden, expected to open later this year. Of course, lead donor Lou Martin was among the gala celebrants, along with Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker and Patrick Newman, president and CEO of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas.
Celebrating 100 Years
Judy Koslow, a former garden club president who was chosen to chair the entire year of celebrations, had nothing but praise for the members who produced the gala. The “in-house team” planned details from linen cocktail napkins to chandelier-lit bars to color schemes for the al fresco event.
“I thought it was magical,” she said. “We let the future members of this club know what the women of their past were able to accomplish, to celebrate them and to celebrate us.”
How did the magical night end? As all great parties should — with a champagne toast to the Fort Worth Garden Club, fireworks shooting over a rose garden terrace, and celebratory dancing under the stars.
