American garden clubs and the fight for nature preservation, 1890--1980

The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate that garden clubs have played a key role in the American environmental movement. In examining the garden clubs' foray into environmental battles, I hope to dismantle dualistic gender assumptions that read middle-class suburban women's interest in saving "natural beauty" as a footnote to dominant environmental history narratives. I use garden clubs as a case study that illustrates women's successful mobilization for wild areas despite their exclusion from professional conservation and preservation. I examine four periods in the evolution of the garden club movement and its members' concerns for the natural world beyond the garden gate. First, I demonstrate the ideological roots of American garden clubs in 19 th- and early 20th-century cultural forces that encouraged affluent women to regard the natural world as part of their homes. Second, I contend that garden clubs helped to lead the women's phalanx of the Progressive-Era preservation movement. Third, I examine the central place of garden clubs in awakening the public's interest in ecology during the interwar period. Finally, I turn to the post-war era to argue that garden clubs empowered many educated suburban women to express their growing range of concerns about environmental degradation. While the convergence of feminism and environmentalism served to weaken garden clubs and other traditional women's organizations, I conclude by showing that many of the gains of the contemporary environmental movement could not have been achieved without their dedication to endangered species protection, environmental education, and the preservation of natural areas.