The Greenbriar Garden Club was formed sometime in the late 1950s by Jewish women in Squirrel Hill. The group stopped appearing in newspapers in 1975.
Like many of the Jewish garden clubs of that era, the Greenbriar Garden Club undertook civic projects alongside its meetings and flower shows. Greenbriar formed a special relationship with the Jewish Home for the Aged. Club members visited monthly to teach classes on flower arranging, window box gardening and outdoor planting, and also to lead visits to area flower shows.
In his National Council of Jewish Women oral history, Saul Weisberg claimed that when Greenbriar Garden Club closed and liquidated its remaining accounts, it gave half its funds to Montefiore Hospital and the other half to the Riverview apartments on the growing Jewish Home for the Aged campus.
Greenbriar Garden Club appears to be the first local Jewish garden club to raise funds for land reclamation activities in Israel. In the mid-1960s, the Jewish National Fund promoted land reclamation in various parts of Israel, specifically the Yakinton region of the upper Galilee. The idea was to raise fund around the world for these activities by assigning specific acreage to different Jewish communities. The project was promoted among garden clubs. The above article notes Greenbriar's efforts and encourages others to follow them.
All this year, the Rauh Jewish Archives is highlighting stories of Jewish club life in Western Pennsylvania. If you would like to donate records of a local Jewish club, or just chat about clubs, contact the archive or call 412-454-6406.
