President Nancy Madeoy welcomed members to the first LAGC meeting of 2025.
What’s growing in your garden? Members agreed that we don’t have anything growing in our gardens right now. Andrea Maire mentioned that she saw snowdrops growing in the area.
Our new T-shirts were distributed by Helen. They look great! Members will be asked to wear their T-shirts to LAGC group events. Thank you to Helen for organizing the ordering and distribution of the T-shirts.
The 2025 LAGC Directory was distributed to members. All members will receive a paper copy this year because it’s a special color edition for our 75th anniversary. Claudia and Andrea did a fantastic job creating this special handbook by including photos and historical information about LAGC. Great job! We appreciate your hard work to make the handbook memorable for 2025.
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Members were asked to please verify that your name, address and email address are correctly listed in the handbook. Please notify Linda Brown if there are any corrections.
Nancy reviewed how the text chain will be implemented in the event that we need to quickly contact all members. Please see page 4 of the LAGC handbook to review the Text Tree.
Treasurer Denny reviewed the proposed budget for 2025. Many items remain unchanged from the 2024 budget. One important change is the increase of the Fellowship Hall rental fee from $360 to $450. The 75th anniversary celebration budget will be $2,500. We held a vote and the 2025 budget was approved by members.
Claudia reviewed all the activities that are planned for the 75th anniversary which LAGC will celebrate throughout 2025. One particular event of interest discussed this evening is the planting of the trees which was arranged in partnership with Tree Pittsburgh and the Allegheny County Park Rangers. Members were presented with 2 potential sites where we could plant the trees. The final vote concluded that members will plant the trees in the area near the horse arena in North Park. The tree planting will occur, rain or shine, on Friday, April 11, 2025 at 3:00pm. Members are encouraged to bring their own shovels and gloves. More details will be communicated in the coming months. Thank you to Mary Jo Clayton who spearheaded the planning of this activity.
Mary Jo and Lynn circulated the sign-up sheet to volunteer to weed and maintain the Chapel Garden at Passavant Hospital. Please consider volunteering your time to help with this project. Don’t worry if you didn’t get a chance to sign-up for a week or two! The sign-up sheet will be circulated again at the next few meetings until all the slots are filled.
Hostesses:
Claudia brought a pretty winter centerpiece which included pine boughs, pine cones and hydrangeas. Dianne brought delicious baklava and scrumptious toffee cracker bars. Thank you for creating such a lovely table display.
Program --- Women in Conservation by speaker Deaglan McManus
LAGC members welcomed returning speaker, Deaglan McManus who is a Park Ranger with Allegheny County Parks with a wealth of knowledge about the history of the parks. This evening’s program titled “Women in Conservation” conveyed the message that women have played a major role in both the creation and conservation of the parks of Allegheny County. His interesting and informative presentation focused on 4 women who had an important impact on the Allegheny County Parks, as well as environmental interests across the USA.
· Liz Cushman Titus Putnam born in New York in 1933 was inspired by an article she read in 1953 “Let's close the national parks”. As a college student she founded the SCA which stands for Student Conservation Association. It was modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930’s. Pittsburgh has the largest number of alumni for this conservation program. She had strong ties with park rangers and garden clubs. Many of the Allegheny County Park rangers received training thru the SCA. Our speaker said that his first year as a park ranger he was paid through the SCA and its seasonal ranger program.
· Mary Flinn Lawrence In1969 she sold her 485 acre estate to Allegheny County and Hartwood Acres Park was built. In 1920 she was appointed to the State Forestry Commission. In 1927 she planted 96,000 pine trees on the Hartwood estate to prevent soil erosion. She was named the second largest tree planter that year. She was a suffragist, philanthropist and involved in politics.
· Caren Glotfelty was the Executive Director of the Allegheny County Parks Foundation and had a strong partnership with county government. Her experience in environmental planning and efforts to raise funds led her to implement projects in the Allegheny County Parks. One of her instrumental achievements was through a partnership with the Audubon Society where she was able to have over 100 chimney swift towers built and installed at nine parks. She established a 4 acre meadow in Hartwood Acres which is planted with native wildflowers and grasses. It’s been named the Caren Glotfelty Meadow.
· Rachel Carson was born in Springdale, Pennsylvania. She worked for the Fish and Wildlife Services. She’s credited as being the mother of the modern day environmental movement. She had a great interest in the effects of DDT insecticide which caused a decline in birds and bald eagles. Her novel “Silent Springs” was published in 1962 and caused the public to take notice of the environment and rally for change. She’s a well-known Pittsburgher and the Rachel Carson Bridge and Rachel Carson Trail have been named in her honor. She died of breast cancer at age 56.
Rachel Carson, scientist 
DDT sprayed on people.
