Locktender's Garden at the Erie Canal Museum
In 1991 the SGC garden club developed a plan for a Locktender’s Garden at the Erie Canal Museum in downtown Syracuse, which led to an award from the Garden Club of America.
The original Locktenders’ Gardens flourished during the Victorian era along the canal system. The SGC plan represented that time period and how the gardens were used for food, trading plants, beauty and more.
The gardens, installed in 1992, currently consists of a walled area surrounding two raised demonstration beds - one for vegetables and one for annual flowers. There are also two wooden barrels for herbs and heirloom rose on the north side of the area.
Since then, the garden club members have planted and maintained the gardens, which are seen by more than 2,000 school children annually.
Dark Isle at the Lorenzo State Historic Site
The Syracuse Garden Club has been a steward of the Dark Isle Gardens at Lorenzo since 1976.
Planted in 1854 by Ledyard Linklain, the son of John Linklain who founded the Village of Cazenovia.
The gardens consisted of is a double hedge of white pine, hemlock, and Norway spruce. The gardens are now part of the Historic Lorenzo Site Museum.
When the garden club began its work, it focused on encouraging native wildflowers to replace the weedy undergrowth that had begun to take over beneath the trees' canopy. That work continues today, and a special emphasis has been placed on removing invasive species in the gardens.
