Gay gardeners

That might mean assembling herbal first-aid kits for youth organizers, as Valencia does, or knowing which plants to turn to when conventional medicine isn’t accessible.

Members learned the art of flower arranging, participated in flower shows, and earned their first blue ribbons in the Garden Club Council Spring Flower show of 1952.

Berkeley) Wilson, Betty (Mrs. She didn’t realize then that her mother was essentially hacking a medicinal syrup recipe with what was on hand.

Years later, while studying herbalism at an ancestral apothecary in the Bay Area, Dimas asked her mother why they used soda instead of water to carry the herbs.

And in a political moment when both abortion care and gender-affirming care are under attack, grief work is inseparable from the fight to protect ways of healing that the state cannot regulate out of existence.

Plants carry these lessons. Diane Okoniewski and founding member Peggy Robinson deceased in 2012.

Gay Gardeners Club began in April of 1951 at the home of Lally (Mrs.

In 1967, the club organized a flower show with the theme “History, Beauty, Industry: Here for all in our South Carolina.”

They have been involved in maintaining gardens at the Speech and Hearing Center and Children’s Garden Center located at College Place United Methodist Church. And Valencia emphasizes that reclaiming plant knowledge also means reclaiming queer healing histories erased by colonization — reminding us that queer people have always been part of medicine-making, even when, or especially because, we’ve been written out of the story.

Remembering our relationships with plants, June says, is also grief work — a way of repairing the ruptures left by colonialism and the ongoing destruction of ecosystems for profit.

“Our work is about facilitating our remembering and our own relationships to herbalism that are innate in each of us.”

And one could argue that their work is especially crucial right now. The club has been gardening, serving the community, and gathering for lifelong learning over the past 60 years and is proud of many efforts that have contributed to the beautification of our city and state.

“It’s about seeking repair and loving relationships between humans and plants, making medicine that is shared and accessible.”

Credit: Mara June

In case you don’t know, an herbalist is a healer who works with plants as medicine — not only in the Western sense of remedies, but in the Indigenous sense of reciprocal care with the land.

“Herbalism is about shifting away from that.”

Reyes, Dimas and another herbalist, John Jairo Valencia, co-run Hood Herbalism, an online school offering courses and a community grounded in BIPOC, queer, and working-class herbal traditions; their lineages are often excluded from mainstream herbal curricula.

This isn’t to imply that herbs can replace Western medicine — but herbal wisdom that could help us and the planet stay well in the absence of a functioning state feels more urgent than ever. Gay in the Garden is a space for queer folks and their allies to come together for both unstructured and facilitated time in the garden to show up freely and authentically.

Their first civic project was the Junior League Speech School where members mowed, planted, and raked the grounds monthly. Charles) Carson, Ashlyn (Mrs.

Credit: Martiza Geronimo

June invokes the corn poppy, whose seeds can lie dormant for a century until disturbed soil calls them back, often after war.

William L.) Boyd, Deanne (Mrs. For Dimas and the other herbalists I spoke with, the heart of herbalism is relationship, not transaction.

The ways settler culture has recruited herbalism for capitalism in the U.S. are both subtle and insidious. Club members were also immediately active with the Garden Club Council of Greater Columbia helping with efforts to raise funds to build the headquarters at Maxcy Gregg Park.

Richard) Keenan when 18 friends met through their mutual desire to “delve into the secrets of horticulture and flower arranging” according to a tenth anniversary commemoration booklet written by charter member Gretchen Gayden Dawson.

“We are here on this planet because someone in our lineage, a couple generations before, had plant knowledge that was able to make medicine for healing,” says Valencia.

Third row: Sarah Cuttino, and Libby Tompkins, Up the Stairs (l-r): Lauren Smith, Cathy McLeod, Kim Leighton, Judy Cannon, Pat Owings, Ann Fishburne, Elyce Robinson, Donna Rone, Anne Shull, Joe Bryan Robertson, Margaret Stubbs, Donna Pleicones, Susan Kay, Nelle Holcombe, and Jane Davidson. Paul) Palmer, Harriet (Mrs.