Wesleyan Woods Garden Club thinks pink for 50th anniversary with bow sale

When JoAnn Portwood’s family visited her a few weeks ago, it was a challenge to find a place to sit down anywhere in the house.

There were pink strings, ribbons and satin bows on the floor and spread across the dining room table.

“They call me the Bow Lady,’’ she said, laughing. “I made about 250 this year.’’

Portwood said she learned to tie bows when her son, David, was a student at McKibben-Lane Elementary School back in the late 1960s.

Now, the “Bow Lady” leads the charge of the bow brigade for the Wesleyan Woods Garden Club every spring. 

This past Saturday, she gathered with Gail Moulton, Virginia Cowsert and several other club members at the corner of Guerry Drive and Oxford Road to sell the pink bows, swag and wreaths. 

Proceeds from the bow sales are used for the seasonal and perennial plantings and decorations at the five neighborhood gateways along Wesleyan Drive.

Incoming club president Beth Tripp, who is the gate chairperson, oversees the landscaping and maintenance. Gloria Marshall chairs the club’s Cherry Tree Trail Committee. 

With the arrival of the first day of spring and the start of the annual Cherry Blossom Festival next week, March is the club’s  high-profile month.

In May, the garden club will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a luncheon. It was founded in April 1975 with a mission to continue the planting of Yoshino cherry trees that started two years earlier, according to Emily Cook, who is compiling a 50-year history of the group.

In March 1970, festival founder Carolyn Crayton and her husband, the late Lee Crayton, brought their children to Macon from their home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to visit the city.

Lee had accepted a job in the front office with the Bibb Company. The Crayton family rode around, exploring neighborhoods, and drove down Ingleside Avenue. The Yoshino cherry trees were blooming in and around the home of William Fickling Sr., whose legacy became the more than 120,000 cherry trees he gave to the community during his lifetime.

Fickling’s real estate company, Fickling & Walker, had developed the new Wesleyan Woods subdivision. The Craytons purchased a lot on Guerry Drive and began building the fifth house in the subdivision. 

In 1973, Lee and Carolyn Crayton attended a company picnic at the Fickling farm on Rivoli Drive. Their daughter, Annette, had been working at Fickling’s office in the afternoons after school and had asked her parents to attend the picnic with her. 

When Fickling sat down with Crayton, she told him her vision of having the roads in Wesleyan Woods lined with cherry trees.

“You know what?’’ Fickling told her, “I can make that dream come true. If you can make arrangements to plant them, I will give you the trees.’’

Crayton received 100% participation from the 66 homeowners in the subdivision. She contacted the county to make sure of the right-of-way regulations. She asked Georgia Power to dig holes 8 feet from the road and 50 feet apart to plant some 500 trees along Wesleyan Woods Drive, Oxford Circle, Oxford Road and Guerry Drive.

The garden club was organized to continue the ongoing neighborhood beautification efforts. The club now has 47 active members. Stephanie Tinkey is the current president. Genene Muse is a charter member and is still active in the club. Crayton, who is 94 years old, is an honorary member. Three club members — Betty Ragland, Kaye Hlavaty and Jean Woodworth — have served on the festival’s senior royalty court over the years.

The garden club’s most ambitious project now involves the replanting of cherry trees in Wesleyan Woods. The average lifespan of a Yoshino is 25-30 years.  

Cook said that when many of the original trees began dying off or showing signs of aging, the club initiated a plan in 2008 to begin replacing nearly 50 dead or dying trees. Arborist Matt Peed inspected the trees and made the recommendations. 

The club contributed $1,500 to underwrite the removal and replanting at a cost of $250 per tree. The cost to homeowners was only $50 per tree. The trees were larger than seedlings and averaged 2 inches in diameter. 

The following year, Crayton helped secure a $5,000 grant from the National Arbor Day Foundation. The club later received grant money from YKK, the Fickling Foundation and the E.J. Grassman Trust. 

Working with the Keep Macon-Bibb Beautiful Commission, more than 200 trees have been replaced over the past 17 years. This year, 18 trees were removed and replaced with 24.

“We are trying to maintain that gorgeous canopy throughout the neighborhood,’’ Cook said.

Wesleyan Woods has long been one of the prettiest and most popular routes on the Cherry Blossom Trail. It is expected to have its usual high volume of traffic during this year’s festival, although tour buses are now being discouraged from including the neighborhood on their routes.

Moulton said the club’s bow sales not only help with funding the beautification efforts but also promote the spirit of the festival.

“If you have bows on all the mailboxes when there aren’t any blossoms, at least there is something pink,’’ she said.