“It was a nice summer day in 1939 that a group of ladies gathered to talk about their gardens, never dreaming that they would be doing it for half a century.”
So wrote Pipestone Garden Club member Colleen Hofelman in 1989 when the Pipestone Garden Club held its 50th anniversary Garden Party bash at the Calumet Inn.
Today, 20 years following that golden year, the Garden Club still convenes monthly with its seven remaining members: Colleen Hofelman, Rose Helmer, Erma Adkins, Thelma Rauk, Luella Stauffer, Ethel Franzen and Alice Severtson.
Though they now take a break from their monthly meetings during the winter, they pick up in April where they left off in October, meeting, taking roll, discussing the reading the assigned member has brought, eating lunch, visiting a bit more and then going home.
“We’re just a really tight knit little group that does our thing,” Hofelman said.
Years ago, the club boasted 26 members. They filled buses to tour gardens in places like Brookings and Sioux Falls.
“But there are too few of us now; that would be too big a job for us to get 50 people together,” Hofelman said.
They organized a ‘Garden of the Week’ contest, whereby local gardens were judged and the winner published weekly in the Pipestone County Star — a garden contest that was the precursor to the planter boxes seen all over the city.
They held Garden Shows regularly, each with a different theme, that would draw people from all over.
“The garden shows involved an awful lot of work,” Rauk said.
During their monthly meetings, they would talk about growing flowers, arranging flowers, how to set containers and pots to their best advantage, which colors to use together.
“We would say, ‘How is your so-and-so growing? Did you try this? What did you do about the blight?’” Hofelman said. “We would try to solve each others’ problem. That was the idea of getting together.”
In 1988, they found an evergreen south of town and transplanted it on the west lawn of the Courthouse.
“Next to it is an unusually-shaped rock, almost exactly the shape of Minnesota,” Hofelman said. “So we had it engraved in Sioux Falls telling what date it was put in. That tree grew so well because of Darlene Meyer, who worked at the courthouse, carrying buckets and buckets of water to that tree. It would have died if it weren’t for her; we’re very grateful for that.”
One of the club’s efforts can be found in the little-known C.H. Bennett Park at the junction of Hwys. 75 and 23.
The small bit of land aside the gas station was preserved as part of the city’s efforts to beautify the highway entrances to Pipestone. The Garden Club was in its development, including its naming.
“We got a call from June Sandberg when we were working on that park,” Hofelman said. “She called and said she had something for our park. I assumed it was a plant or bush we could transplant. I went to her house, out back in the woods and there were the stones that said, ‘C.H. Bennett’ and the date from an old building they had torn down and salvaged the stones. So we put those stones in there and it became Bennett Park. That was a hard-won battle, but we did it. It’s a lovely little place. We planted evergreens and maple trees in a half circle that we got south of town and there are two flagpoles.”
Though the club has survived all these years, the existing members range in age between 81 and 101.
“We’d like to have some young people,” Rauk said.
“But we haven’t really gone down on our knees to do any serious gardening anymore,” said Adkins. “We’re getting pretty old.”
“We’re concerned it might not continue,” Hofelman said. “It’s getting more and more difficult. You wonder if we can do it one more year.”
