Quite a roll call!

 

Thanks to Membership Chair Ruth Little for compiling a list of Piedmont Chapter speakers from 1991 to the present. You’ll be amazed at all the wonderful speakers who have spoken to our chapter over the years! Ruth has also added notes of activities and events documented in our newsletter. We are so grateful to Marian Stephenson and Bobby Ward for their twenty-five years creating a wonderful historic record of our chapter in The Trillium.

 

NARGS Piedmont Chapter Speaker history gleaned from The Trillium

 

 

Article from The Trillium, March-April 2006, by Carolyn Williams:

 

Piedmont Chapter’s 20th Anniversary Celebration

Tony Avent accepts Piedmont Chapter Service Award January 21, 2006

The Piedmont Chapter of NARGS celebrated its 20th anniversary on January 21, 2006 at the RTP Hilton with 58 people in attendance. In addition to the opportunity to socialize and to hear an interesting talk, the celebration was an opportunity to acknowledge some of the people whose fervor for gardening and willingness to donate their time and skills have made our chapter possible.

After drinks and a Tuscan Bistro buffet, Chapter President Bobby Ward welcomed those of us present with a beguiling account of the history of the national society and our local chapter. Bobby then recognized the three former chapter chairs who were present: Norman Beal, Bobby Wilder, and Marian Stephenson.

Prior to the evening’s featured talk, Bobby Ward presented the Piedmont Chapter Service and Recognition Award to Tony Avent in recognition of the many ways in which Tony has extended himself to make our chapter successful. Among these services have been his recruiting and hosting prominent speakers, donating plants to our auctions and sales, giving talks to our chapter, and promoting our organization in his nursery catalog and on his web site.

Of course, no one can forget Tony as plant sale auctioneer, admiring and caressing a plant as he carries it down the aisle, eliciting higher bids with his enthusiasm. That vast enthusiasm for all things horticultural has brought much national attention to Triangle gardening, and Tony’s contributions have helped to make the Piedmont chapter both prominent and solvent (…)

Thanks to all who made the twentieth anniversary celebration a success and to the “thin green line” of intrepid gardeners who have given their time and energy to make it possible for the rest of us to learn more about plants. Here’s to the next twenty! 

 

The Piedmont Chapter’s first meeting is announced in the News & Observer, September 15, 1985:

 

 

William Lanier Hunt, writing in the Durham Herald, on the newly founded Piedmont Chapter, Sept. 29, 1985 :