McLean Garden Club Says Goodbye

By Bobbi Bowman, McLean Patch

MCLEAN, VA -The Thursday Morning Garden Club of Potomac Hills conducted its last official community act recently. Then it was gone.

On a beautiful warm Saturday afternoon last week, the members of the Garden Club, their families and friends, about 30 folks in all, gathered in a small century-old family cemetery to dedicate a bench with a small plague. The bench is a gift of serenity to the neighborhood.

"Through the years we created a tradition of giving to the community," said Sandra Butcher, the immediate past president of the garden club. "This bench and the plaque are the evidence that we existed," she told the crowd.

After 45 years of bringing  women together in the Potomac Hill subdivision on Kirby Road, the garden club, faced with dwindling membership, decided to disband.

Dale and Jacob Griffiths, father and son, sitting on the bench they built.

Three generations of the Griffiths family built the simple bench. Mrs. Bullock asked her fellow club member Lynn Griffiths to oversee construction of the bench. Mrs. Griffiths turned to her son Dale, a builder, who grew up in Potomac Hills.

Dale said he and his son Jacob, 9,  built the bench in one weekend. The following weekend they poured the concrete slab, and secured the bench to it. If you look closely under the bench you'll find a 2010 U.S. penny and Jacob's initials.

"It was a fun project," Dale Griffiths said as he and his son relaxed on their project.

"I was thrilled beyond belief," Bullock said. "This is a quality job that will last for years."

This small gathering of neighbors who raised flowers and families together knitted together two threads of McLean history.

The Garden Club has donated their minutes and memorabilia to the Fairfax County Public Library.

Susan Levy, a historian from the library, gave a short history of the Adams-Nelson-Sewell Cemetery where the bench was dedicated. It's a family cemetery that traces its history back to when what is now the Potomac Hills subdivision was part of a vast planatation owned by the Adams family that settled there in 1781. It was sold in 1825 to the Nelson family who intermarried with the Sewell family. Maud Hirst was the last person buried there in 1946, Levy said.

Now both the garden club and  the cemetery disappear into the mists of McLean history. The bench stands as a silent reminder to both.