It was already growing dark at 6 pm that Wednesday, March 13th, 1935, when the doorbell rang at Miss Susan Iden’s home in downtown Raleigh. Three women in coats and scarves against the evening chill stood at the door. The middle one held a large confectioner’s box.
The door opened to show a tall woman, fifty, with hair cut squarely around her face. Her ardent dark eyes were masked by round glasses, giving her a studious look. Her visitors knew well her gift for making a better future appear within reach if you would just put in a little effort. They had been in the Raleigh Garden Club together for several years already, and shared her sense of purpose in making Raleigh a more beautiful town.
Surprise turned to delight. “Come on in, all of you,” she said in a kind voice. They trooped into the dining room and set the box on the polished oak table, chorusing: “Happy 10th Anniversary from The Raleigh Garden Club.” Opening the box, Susan saw a cake sumptuously decorated with 10 candles on top. One of the women laid a large folder next to the cake, and Susan drew out a beautifully handwritten poem composed in her honor.
Her life is like a garden, sweet
With fragrance rich and rare,
Her flowers, like a paradise
Shed perfume on the air.
This day decennial praises we
To our patron give.
“Our city is wearing a little lovelier dress this year than the spring before because of RGC ,” said President Mary Lee McMillan, smiled contentedly. “Your writing and publicity, the flower shows and plant exchanges, and our Open Garden days – they are all having an impact,” echoed Miss Isabel Busbee proudly. “Don’t forget the Garden School of the Air radio program!” added Mrs. Manning, chair of the Committee on Highway Beautification. “ The Club has been so busy that today there is scarcely a home without it’s garden.”
“And it’s all because of you! “ all three chorused. Susan said in her soft voice, “Well, dears, I think you give me too much credit. I’ve been only to pleased to do my part.” She pulled a slim book from a shelf, bound in green marble paper, and presenting it, said, “Madam President, I was going to save this for the next meeting, but here is my gift to the Club. I’ve written a 10-year historical sketch as Club Historian.”
“You truly are a wonder and an inspiration to us all. Wherever did you find the time? With all your work as Editor of the Woman’s Page and all you do!”
I have to back up a little bit, and catch you up. Miss Susan Iden was born on February 20, 1885 in Raleigh, and graduated from St. Mary’s school in 1904. She attended the School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York. Returning home, she became the first woman feature writer and photographer for the Raleigh Times.
Eleven years before our story, reporter Susan Iden had written a series of articles about gardens in and around Raleigh which appeared every Saturday for nearly nine months. She has a visionary reporting style, part challenging, part cajoling, imbued with a higher standard and a brighter future for Raleigh that had strong appeal to her readers.
Her garden articles were so persuasive and the pictures she took to accompany them so inspirational, that gardeners all over the city were finally aroused to call a meeting and set up garden tours. That meeting was finally held on Friday, March 13th, 1925 and out of it the Raleigh Garden Club was formed. From that meeting Iden reported: “If there is one thing a gardener likes to do better than garden, it is talking over garden problems and joys with another gardener.”
Susan was a charter member and over the following 10 years the Club took on her vision of turning Raleigh into a city of gardens. They were dogged and tireless in their pursuit of Raleigh’s civic beautification, and they gardened! A Highway Beautification committee tackled Hillsborough St. and other main roadsides with hundreds of climbing roses in hedges with winter jasmine, honeysuckle and other shrubs. They planted over 6000 bulbs in Raleigh’s city squares over the 10 years, designed and installed the first Raleigh Rose Garden, set up community vegetable gardens for the poor, established an Arboretum (today the Edna Metz Wells Park), and exchanged or sold thousands of plants to home gardeners. In one sale alone they sold 10 thousand pansies and daisies. And they established a Garden School of the Air radio program to educate the public, along with the custom of Open Garden Sundays one week every month for the public to come and see the gardens of Club members. Susan used her position at the Raleigh Times to publicize and support the Club efforts, writing directly to her reading public and stimulating them to do their part to civic pride.
Susan herself was a devoted lover of the native wildflowers and woodlands in the Triangle. Her own garden was a wildflower paradise. In one of her columns she wrote:
I know of nothing that pays quite so much in pleasure and satisfaction in the garden as a wildflower bed. Wildflowers want no cultivation. Given a corner that halfway suits their habits of growth, a little shady and damp for most of them, and they will do the rest. … The woods things are entirely too lovely and shy and delicate to mix with the more gorgeous, sophisticated city bred flowers.
She promoted wildflowers avidly, holding a special wildflowers and natives spring flower show from 19? To 19?. She used her writing in 1934 to cajole her readers into pressuring the legislature to establish a state flower unique to North Carolina by appealing to state pride and scorning the lowly goldenrod that so many states listed along with NC. She offered the Venus Fly Trap – which only grows in NC – but we ended up with the flower of the dogwood, Cornus florida.
Susan was so committed to wildflowers she started a special study group in the Club to learn about them and promote wildflower conservation with posters in local high schools. The group did talks to other clubs and elementary schools, as well as programs on the Gardening of the Air radio show run by RGC.
Her most lasting legacy was finding a way to get NC State Professor of Botany Dr. B.W. Wells to write a book on the state’s wildflowers or “natural gardens.” Wells was a first generation ecologist and his book was to be written from an ecological perspective, then a radical way to look at growing things. He was willing to write it but didn’t have the means to pay for the publication. Susan set up a subscription plan to sell the book in advance at the Raleigh Garden Club and other garden clubs around the state through the Garden Club of NC. Her plan was successful, because the dynamic Dr. Wells was well known and had often spoke at the monthly meeting programs and was a big favorite as a popularizer for conservation. He loved the plants and vegetation of North Carolina, and he loved to help others feel as he did.
Alas, these were the depression years and the bank where the money was stored failed. The had to start anew. It took several more years but eventually they raised the funds again, paid the publisher the down payment and The Natural Gardens of NC became an instant favorite. It is today in its ?? edition, and still in print and a treasure. Susan credits GCNC in her article recommending the book, but as a staunch friend of Wells, she was the visionary who got the ball rolling and challenged and cajoled everyone past all the obstacles and the bank disaster.
Susan passed away in 1944 in the hometown she loved and worked so hard to turn into a garden paradise. And sadly, as the decades passed, she was forgotten by the Club she inspired and cherished. Until our 85th anniversary, when then President Rita Mercer dug into the State Archives and found her photo and resurrected the story of the founding of the Club. Her picture was framed and her story as our Club founder restored to a place of honor for the Anniversary meeting. It was from Susan Iden that the passion for civic beautification and the cherishing of our wildflowers and native woods first came to the Raleigh Garden Club. She was an evangelist of the transforming power of gardening and its importance to a city’s quality of life.
Susan Iden (second from left) at St. Mary’s High School graduation, 1904.
