SHORTS
BY PAT BRADFORD
Platinum Jubilee
The multigenerational Harbor Island Garden Club
S spring blooms in gardens all over the nation, one
storied local garden club is celebrating its 70th
anniversary.
The Harbor Island Garden Club was established
in 1952 when 10 women met for lunch wearing
white hats and gloves.
Over the succeeding decades the women of Wrightsville Beach
and Harbor Island bonded in a club that holds a long tradition of
service to the community. Members donate their time, skills and
labor in order to beautify the community in a significant way.
The club is a not-for-profit federated club of the National Garden
Club, Inc., and composed of women who live east
of the drawbridge.
“My mother was not a gardener and I
learned how to garden in this club,” says
Elise Running, who joined in 1989.
She is in charge of the club’s
Harbor Way Gardens, at the apex of
the town municipal complex where
U.S. Hwy 74 and 76 merge near the
drawbridge.
“When I got into the club, we had not
lived on this beach more than a couple of
years,” she says. “The club is how I got all
my friends. Now, 70 years later we’re still
here, and we still have women who want to
be in this club.”
Membership is limited to 45. Other than
a vacancy created by someone moving or
passing away, there is only one opportunity
for new members to join. Members attain
honorary status after 25 years, opening a
slot for new active members.
The club is multigenerational.
“We have a lot of mothers and daughters
in the club,” Running says, listing Jeanette Golder, her daughter
Beth Golder, and her daughter Ann as examples.
Another is Betty Starbuck and daughter Kim Gilbert. Gilbert’s
youngest daughter, Dagny, is affectionately called an unofficial
junior HIGC member.
“She gets out here and splits the plants and hauls away the
weeds,” Gilbert says of Dagny.
16 may 2022
WBM
For Betty, being in the club was also about the friendships she
formed with her fellow club members and neighbors.
“We have good strong friends,” she says.
Betty, now in a wheelchair from a stroke, enjoyed sitting in the
sun in the Harbor Way Gardens during the Cape Fear Garden Club
Garden Tour during the Azalea Festival in 2022. While Kim was
stationed nearby to answer questions, Dagny ran to greet tour
visitors.
Betty was very active in the club when Gilbert and her sister
were growing up. She fondly remembers the Rooty Rascals, the
club’s educational program for Wrightsville Beach Elementary
fifth-graders, begun by member Sandy Overbeck in 1984.
A
Members
donate their
time, skills
and labor
in order to
beautify the
community
in a signifi-cant
way.