The Azalea Garden Club will be hosting the Blooming Garden Stroll at Pendleton King Park on March 26.
Attendees will have maps to help guide themselves on a tour of the Azalea Walk, the other gardens and the entire park.
“There’s such a diverse topography in the park,” said Azalea Garden Club president Beverly Dorn. “We thought that people might enjoy just being on their own to seek whatever interests them.”
The Walk Entrance Project traces back to when the club volunteered to maintain the Azalea Walk at Pendleton King in early 2022, after seeking a project to spark activity among members once they began after the downslope of the COVID pandemic.
The Augusta Council of Garden Clubs, the Georgia Rehabilitation Institute and Pinnacle Bank all supported the garden club in coordinating the event celebrating the completion of the Azalea Walk Entrance Project.
Landscape architect Derek Vanover, son of then-Azalea Garden Club president Joan Vanover, was serving on the park foundation’s board of trustees, and presented the idea of the club tending to the Azalea Walk to his fellow board members.
The Azalea Walk entrance had fallen in disrepair, the asphalt broken by tree roots. The Augusta Council of Garden Clubs and the Pendleton King Park Foundation helped the club raise some $10,000 to cover the cost of paving and relocating the entrance to make it safer.
“We’ve been feeling grateful for the help that we had,” Dorn said. “It certainly was more than we could have done on our own.”
The club would later receive a $1,000 Plant America Community Project grant from the National Garden Clubs toward planting native azaleas.
Dorn also credits Dennis Skelley, president of the Georgia Rehabilitation Institute, with providing the funds to the Pendleton King Park Foundation to pave the entrance to the Azalea Walk through the park’s Camellia Gardens, making “the entire walkway… now safe and attractive.”
The Richmond County Engineering Department had conducted a traffic study at the park in September 2020, to assess the degree of local interest, which the garden club would use as they applied for several grants to help them tackle their maintenance projects.
“There were over 15,500 vehicles that were in and out of main entrance on Troupe Street in that month alone,” said Dorn. “So that said to us that it was a worthwhile investment in our community, because people love it so much.”
Alongside the tour of the park, the free public event will have a ribbon cutting ceremony, refreshments and musical performances by the Rob Foster Duo.
The Blooming Garden Stroll will be at Pendleton King Park, 1600 Troupe St., on Sunday, March 26, from 3 p.m. until 5 p.m.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
