2025 Awards from the Garden Club of Illinois

PRESENTED TO OUR 

DES PLAINES GARDEN CLUB

BLUE SEAL ~ 2021

PRESENTED TO OUR 

DES PLAINES GARDEN CLUB

SILVER SEAL ~ 2021

• PRESENTED TO OUR DES PLAINES GARDEN CLUB

"Recruiting New Members"  1ST PLACE ~GOLD SEAL

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RECRUITING NEW MEMBERS 

• Always necessary, these are some of the ways our Des Plaines Garden Club is involved in the community and promotes our Club.
• April - for Earth Day members go to two schools and work with second graders promoting gardening.
• May - is a busy month for our Club. We have a Spring Plant Sale promoted by members displaying signs in their yards, advertising in local papers and on the electronic sign at the Frisbie Senior Center, where the sale is held. Members donate most of the plants. Two local nurseries also donate plants. The sale brings shoppers from many suburbs. Other activities include hosting a program with the Des Plaines Public Library at the Library, as well as participating in the Spring Fun Fair in town, helping children with a planting project.
• July - our Club has a Garden Walk to six homes, followed by lunch at a restaurant.
• September - the city has a Fall Family Festival where our Club has a recruiting table. At most of these events, our Club t-shirts are proudly worn to promote our Club.
• November - is our Des Plaines Garden Club’s Annual Luncheon/Fundraiser at a restaurant and is promoted on the electronic sign at the Frisbie Senior Center, in newspapers and garden magazines. There is a huge raffle with prizes donated by members and many businesses that our Club Members recruit from. There is also a delicious bake sale with homemade goodies donated by our Club Members.
• Our Des Plaines Garden Club donates to 24 local, state, and national organizations. We also plant and maintain three gardens, one at the Frisbie Senior Center, one at Lake Park where they also installed a Blue Star Marker and bench for our Club’s 75th Anniversary and the third is at the Self-Help Food Pantry. There are also members who go to nursing homes to conduct garden therapy with the residents.
• Applications for membership are available at all functions our Club attends or mailed to anyone requesting information.
• Thank you to everyone helping to recruit members, in anyway, at all the events our Club attends and sharing the love of our Garden Club Family all year.

• Harold has been a member of our Des Plaines Garden Club since 2015. is an extreme asset to our Club. He oftentimes goes above and beyond for the benefit of our Club and its members as a whole. Whenever a request is asked of a member, Harold is always willing to offer his services. The most impressive task was our Club’s recent request to work on upgrading our website. While our Club was in dire need of an upgrade Harold, without hesitation, volunteered. We were so glad he did. Our Club’s website had not been updated for well over two years. It lacked photos and history of events that took place in our Club over the years. Harold worked patiently and tirelessly for several months, coordinating the shutting down of the old website with the former Webmaster and diligently recreated a new website on his own, our Club’s new Administrator/Webmaster was born. Harold’s expertise as a graphic artist was also invaluable to this project. In addition, Harold linked the website to a Facebook page. The Club has been incredibly impressed with how Harold is constantly updating photos and events both on the website as well as the Facebook page. He has now  known as our Club’s “Social Media guru”. Lastly, Harold deserves the credit for the design of our Club’s Yearbook, celebrating its 90th year anniversary. We, the members of our Des Plaines Garden Club, are pleased and honored to nominate Harold Effinger for the most Very Important Person Award.