Camden in Flower

From our friends at the Camden Children's Garden:

More than 500 participants in the American Horticultural Society’s “Growing Fertile Minds and Communities”conference will visit the Camden Children’s Garden from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 26.

The Garden is co-hosting the conference along with Longwood Gardens, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and Winterthur Museum and Country Estate. This is the 16th annual National Children and Youth Garden Symposium sponsored by AHS, the largest and oldest organization of its kind in the nation.

“We’re honored to be selected as a co-host, and we’re eager to have horticulture and education professionals from across the country see first-hand what we’re doing in Camden,” says Mike Devlin, executive director of the Children’s Garden.

“Gardening’s popularity has never been higher among adults and children alike, driven in part by concern about the economy, the environment, food, and obesity,” Devlin adds. “Gardening is something families can do together. Gardening enhances the ‘green’ quality of homes and neighborhoods. It’s good for the environment – and good for people, too.”

Devlin and his wife, Valerie Frick – the Garden’s director of education – last month were presented with the AHS’s Jane L. Taylor Award, which is given to individuals and organizations that inspire future horticulturalists through children and youth gardening. Devlin and Frick co-founded the Camden City Garden Club, Inc. in 1985. After hearing Taylor speak at the first National Children and Youth Garden Symposium in 1993, they went on to open the Children’s Garden in 1999.

The Garden provides youth education and employment programs and has helped 250 city youngsters stay in school and graduate since 1994 – despite Camden’s 60 percent dropout rate. The Garden Club operates Grow Lab (greenhouses on wheels) programs in most of the city’s public, private, and parochial elementary schools and helps hundreds of community gardeners citywide.


The AHS conference will be headquartered at the University of Delaware in Newark, Del.