The Reston Garden Club Collection, which is part of the Planned Community Archives, comprises a group of scrapbooks dating from 1970 to 1995. The collection documents the activities of the Club through photographs, newspaper articles, and the Club's newsletter, the Weeder's Digest. The photographs illustrate a variety of the Club's functions, such as visits to public and private gardens, Club luncheons, and flower arranging workshops. The newspaper articles document the Club's activities, such as the popular Holiday House Tours, election of officers, and garden workshops. The scrapbooks are beautifully decorated with intricate paper cutouts, hand painted designs, and sketches done by club members. The collection not only records in words and images the long and continuous history of this vital club, it documents the beginning of the planned community, Reston, part of the rich texture of everyday life. Such information is frequently lost to history, and its preservation in SC&A offers a rare view into the life of a planned community.

 

 

Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) preserves and makes available to all students, faculty, and researchers many kinds of original and scholarly materials. Subject areas in SC&A include Northern Virginiana, Planned Communities, Congressional Papers, Performing Arts, Maps, the Civil War, and George Mason University. Formats in SC&A include manuscripts, rare books, playbills, musical scores, audio and videotapes, architectural drawings, photographs, and slides.