AUGUSTA, GA () – If you head down to the 5th Street Marina, you may have noticed a garden underneath the train tracks.

In this episode of “Your Hometown Road Trip,” the team visited the Iris Garden Club to learn more about its members, their activities, and the effort involved in maintaining their beautiful garden.

What is the Iris Garden Club?

“Iris Garden Club was started in 1949, and it’s still working beautifully. It’s over 75 years old,” said member, Rita Hamilton.

How often are you down here?

“Our leader, Bonnie McClain, has been at this for 25 years. She began organizing us long ago, and she coordinates the garden clubs when they come to assist. All the clubs in the council collaborate to tidy up, plant, and contribute. This garden is a place where people donate plants or plant them in honor of milestones like birthdays, funerals, and anniversaries,” explained Hamilton.

Why is it important to have this kind of place and why is it important to take care of it?

“We were granted the privilege to have a garden where people can plant commemorative plants. It’s known as a perennial garden. Perennials return year after year, whereas annuals need planting each year. So, this garden includes both annuals and perennials,” added Hamilton.

What about doing this do you love?

“I say that my husband wouldn’t buy me a lake place and wouldn’t take me down to the ocean, so here I’m by the water and it’s free. Then you can come down here, sit down, have an ice cream, and I get to work in the garden. We were so fortunate during Helene, it took out one of the big cypress trees, and it took out this big oak tree in the children’s playground, but the river came up 18 feet, and the docks actually came up to this level, they stopped about 5 inches from the garden, and so the garden was miraculously saved,” said Volunteer, Dr. Joyce Haskell.

How do you meet out here?

“We see hundreds of school aged children, they come and have their picnic lunch. They go to the museum of history across the street and then they walk them over here. If you saw people walk their dogs and ride bicycles but people from all over the world have come here and we’ve made wonderful friends,” said Haskell.

The Iris Garden Club encourages others to to come join them down at the 5th Street Marina, on Fridays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for a work day. They are normally the first Friday of every month.