Steel Magnolias: How the Garden Club of Georgia became a political power

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Posted 8:51AM on Sunday, February 10, 2002

SAVANNAH - Their name evokes images of blue-haired ladies serving tea and cucumber sandwiches. But lawmakers at the state Capitol have come to respect and fear the power of the Garden Club of Georgia. With 15,000 members, including former first lady Rosalynn Carter and several lawmakers' mothers and wives, the Garden Club has become known as much for grass-roots political muscle as flower shows and luncheons. In the past few years, it has waged an aggressive fight against billboard clutter and won several lawsuits challenging roadside tree-cutting policies. Lawmakers still remember the day in 1996 when 500 angry Garden Club ladies filled the Capitol halls, sending some legislators fleeing to the men's room. ``Under the dome, we are known as the little steel magnolias, until you cross us,'' said Joan Brown, a volunteer lobbyist for the Garden Club. ``Then we're the pit bulls.'' The Garden Club, founded in Athens in 1928, has been battling billboard proliferation for as long as it's been planting wildflowers in highway medians and picking up roadside trash. But the group wasn't always considered a serious political force. Mary Helen Ray, an 85-year-old member from Savannah, remembers when the group petitioned local officials to curtail the encroachment of billboards on the skyline of Georgia's oldest city. Their concerns were largely ignored. ``They were a little bit more ladylike,'' said Ray, the state president in 1971. ``They were educated, but simply didn't have the force that they have today.'' That all changed in the mid-1990s when the Garden Club began relying less on Southern charm and more on lawsuits. It sued the powerful state Department of Transportation for allowing billboard companies to cut trees in public rights of way that obscure their signs. At issue was the DOT charging only $25 to companies for cutting public trees valued at hundreds of dollars by arborists. The Georgia Supreme Court ruled in the Garden Club's favor in 1995, saying the tree-trimming rules were an illegal giveaway of public resources. The next year, the DOT and billboard lobbyists pressed the Legislature to circumvent the court's ruling by rewriting the law. The Garden Club responded by busing 500 members from across the state to lobby their lawmakers in person. ``I remember at first people were kind of shocked to see them here, but then they realized these women are serious,'' said Rep. DuBose Porter, D-Dublin, a Garden Club ally. ``They would call me out in the hallway and say, `We knew your mother. We judged flower shows together.''' Lawmakers attempted to compromise by forming a committee to regulate tree cutting, but it never convened. And the DOT resumed charging small fees for tree trimming. The Garden Club sued again, and the Georgia Supreme Court again ruled in its favor in November. However, the court has since agreed to reconsider its ruling. A new decision is pending. ``Georgia is probably the only state that has sued. It's the only state that I know of,'' said Marion Hilliard of Orange Park, Fla., legislative coordinator for garden clubs in eight Southern states. ``They tried it the very nice, ladylike way of going about it, and it did not work,'' Hilliard said. ``Sometimes you've got to take this approach ... if nobody wants to listen and they treat a bunch of ladies like they've got purple hair and all they're good for is pouring tea.'' The Georgia Garden Club hasn't dropped its Capitol vigil. As the state House debated a proposal to reduce the legal minimum distance between billboards last month, Porter warned his colleagues: ``It's a big deal with your garden clubs back home.'' The proposal was quickly voted down. Why the clout? Several lawmakers have wives and mothers who are garden clubbers. Marie Barnes, wife of Gov. Roy Barnes, is a member. So is former first lady Rosalyn Carter (the Garden Club did the flower arrangements for Jimmy Carter's 1977 inauguration). But the prominent names aren't nearly as important as the sheer number of Garden Club members, mostly women over 60, belonging to 550 clubs statewide. ``You're going to go home and you're going to be sitting behind them in church,'' Porter said. ``They're going to be right behind you in the checkout line at the grocery store. They're going to be at your children's soccer game.'' Not all legislators are fans. Sen. Joey Brush, R-Appling, vented his irritation from the Senate floor recently when he said, ``If they're concerned about their garden clubs, then I'd say go get a garden somewhere.'' Brush said later that Garden Club members in the past have threatened to vote him out of office if he didn't side with them. Many lawmakers, while afraid to say so, feel bullied by them, he said. ``I don't know why a lot of them seem to be afraid of the Garden Club,'' Brush said. ``The Garden Club does a lot of good things across the state, but this so-called leadership up here ... has taken the group and turned it into a shrill, anti-billboard group.'' Anti-billboard activism is nothing new. The Georgia Garden Club had a billboard committee in the 1920s, said state president Joy Stuart. Garden clubs in Florida also took up the cause, passing a law in the 1920s that prohibited nailing signs to roadside trees, said Hilliard of the Florida Garden Club. ``Some of them even cut down billboards,'' Hilliard said. ``And the history tells us they were in chauffeur-driven cars.'' Garden Club members say focus remains projects outside the Capitol. In Savannah, the club raised $20,000 last year with its ``hidden gardens'' tour, in which owners of historic homes open their wrought-iron gates for visitors to view their roses and azaleas. The club also picks up trash along the highways and sends stockings stuffed with $1 bills to patients at a state mental hospital every Christmas. And, yes, tea and cucumber sandwiches are still a social tradition. ``We all like a lovely garden, and where better to learn about gardening than the Garden Club?'' said Stuart, the Georgia president. ``But we're not any shrinking violets sitting around sipping tea.''