Adirondack Garden Club Announces 1928 Founders Fund Grants for 2025

Volunteers from Champlain Area Trails (CATS) rebuild a footbridge in the Split Rock Wildway. The Adirondack Garden Club awarded CATS a 1928 AGC Founders Fund grant for this work that improves hiker safety.

The Adirondack Garden Club recently awarded six grants from the club’s 1928 AGC Founders Fund to nonprofits making a positive impact on the Adirondack environment.

The 1928 AGC Founders Fund was established in the 1980s to give grants to not-for-profit organizations and schools involved in programs whose purpose is to create an impact in a specific area within the Adirondacks. These requests are reviewed by the club’s Executive Committee for approval and distribution.

The grants were awarded to:

Adirondack Trail Improvement Society (ATIS), to perform trail maintenance to prevent erosion, preserve vegetation, and make it safer for hikers.
North Country Community College, Saranac Lake, to help fund deer fencing around the native pollinator garden planted by environmental studies students (and decimated by local wildlife).
Town of Waverly Museum, St. Regis Falls, to create a pollinator garden at the museum to serve as a memorial garden that will help prevent erosion.
Champlain Area Trails (CATS), to restore safe access to damaged hiking trails in the Split Rock Wildway. Repairs include rebuilding footbridges, replacing planks, and reinforcing stream crossings to improve hiker safety.
Pendragon Theatre, Saranac Lake. The theater’s new location has professional landscaping plans that include native, low-maintenance, drought-tolerant plants with designated pollinator areas.
Westport/Wadhams Community Alliance, and Flowers Plus! Committee. For the town’s Lilac Festival coming in 2028, public gardens are being planted and maintained by resident volunteers. This grant will help fund dwarf lilac hedges throughout the town.
Garden Club of America’s Scholarship Fund, to help fund students pursuing research in fields including botany, conservation, landscape architecture, and pollinators.

Founded in 1928, the Adirondack Garden Club’s mission is to stimulate the knowledge and love of gardening, to aid in the protection of native plants and birds, and to encourage civic planting, and the conservation of our natural resources. Its purpose is the conservation of the plants, shrubs, and trees native to the Adirondack region, and the making of both wild and cultivated gardens characteristic of the environment in which they are placed, the furthering of the cultivation of gardens throughout the Adirondack area, and the promotion of civic conservation and beautification. The Adirondack Garden Club is a 501 c(3) nonprofit organization. More information is available on the club’s website.