This week, gardeners across the United States are celebrating National Garden Week — and right here on the Grand Strand, one of the area’s most enduring volunteer organizations is among those answering the call. For more than seven decades, the Yaupon Garden Club has quietly shaped both the look and the ecology of the North Myrtle Beach coast, which makes it a fitting local face for a national celebration of all things green.
A National Celebration With Deep Roots
National Garden Week runs June 7–13, 2026, an annual observance set aside to build community pride, welcome new members, and encourage civic and environmental responsibility [National Garden Clubs, 2026]. It is organized by National Garden Clubs, Inc., a nonprofit formed in 1929 and now headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, that links roughly 5,000 member clubs and well over 150,000 members nationwide [National Garden Clubs]. The garden club movement in America reaches back even further — to the first such club, founded in Athens, Georgia, in 1891 [National Garden Clubs]. In other words, the week is less a modern marketing campaign than the latest chapter of a century-old tradition of neighbors organizing to make their communities greener.
That tradition has a strong local expression in North Myrtle Beach.
Seven Decades on the Grand Strand
By the club’s own account, the Yaupon Garden Club got its start in September 1951 and federated the following March, in 1952, counting Evelyn McElveen among its charter members [Yaupon Garden Club]. The founders chose the name “Yaupon” for the hardy native holly that grows in great profusion along the Carolina coast — a nod, from the very beginning, to the region’s own flora rather than imported ornamentals [Yaupon Garden Club]. By 2017, the club had reached its 65th year of service [Yaupon Garden Club]. Today it operates as part of the Garden Club of South Carolina’s Coastal District, alongside neighboring clubs in North Myrtle Beach, Conway, and beyond [Garden Club of South Carolina].
Longevity alone would be notable. But what gives the club its civic weight is what it has done with those decades.
A Legacy Bigger Than Its Flower Shows
Over the years, the Yaupon Garden Club has staged award-winning flower shows and hosted countless picnics and gatherings, yet its most lasting work has been environmental. The club says it was instrumental in the effort to pass legislation protecting sea oats — the tall coastal grass whose blades trap wind-blown sand and anchor the dunes that shield the shoreline from storm surge [Yaupon Garden Club]. In 2015, it partnered with the Coastal Carolina Archives Center at Coastal Carolina University to identify and beautify a portion of the historic Old Kings Highway, located behind the CB Berry Center at Vereen Memorial Gardens in Little River [Yaupon Garden Club].
That conservation streak is still very much alive. The club has worked to support Monarch butterflies and other pollinators amid steep, decades-long population declines [Garden Club of South Carolina]. Last December, it joined city officials and community partners to unveil the new Red Wing Trail in the Bell Park neighborhood and plant five memorial trees honoring local residents [MyHorryNews, 2025]. It also cultivates the next generation of gardeners through its “Budding Ecotots” program at Ocean Drive Elementary School [North Myrtle Beach Times, 2025]. The effort has earned recognition, too: members recently brought home eight first- and second-place certificates from the Garden Club of South Carolina and the Southern Atlantic Region [North Myrtle Beach Times, 2026].
There is a bigger story in that record. The Grand Strand is among the fastest-growing stretches of the Carolinas, and as subdivisions, resorts, and commercial corridors continue to spread, the very features that first drew people here — the dunes, the native tree canopy, the pollinator habitat — face mounting pressure. A volunteer club that fought for sea oats in one era and plants pollinator gardens in another functions as a kind of civic memory: a standing reminder that the coast’s beauty is something actively built and defended, not simply inherited.
How to Take Part This Week
For National Garden Week 2026, the Yaupon Garden Club has planned several activities the public can enjoy [North Myrtle Beach Times, 2026]. According to the club, the week features Bird Bingo at Boulineau’s, a blue bird presentation at the North Myrtle Beach Museum on Wednesday, and a tour of a local garden on Friday [Yaupon Garden Club]. Residents who would like more information — or who are curious about becoming members — can reach the club by email at [email protected] [Yaupon Garden Club].
Conclusion
National Garden Week may be a national observance, but in North Myrtle Beach its spirit is decidedly homegrown. In the Yaupon Garden Club, the town has a seven-decade example of exactly what the week is meant to celebrate — neighbors digging in, season after season, to keep the coast both beautiful and resilient. This week is simply an open invitation for the rest of the community to join them.
Further Reading
- National Garden Clubs — National Garden Week: https://gardenclub.org/national-garden-week
- National Garden Clubs — History and Mission: https://gardenclub.org/history-and-mission
- Garden Club of South Carolina — Coastal District: https://gardenclubofsc.org/Coastal_District
- North Myrtle Beach plants memorial trees (MyHorryNews): https://www.myhorrynews.com/news/north-myrtle-beach-dedicates-new-trail-plants-trees/article_1abf7fa7-c6a7-47e8-ab02-e3d92524dcf0.html
- North Myrtle Beach Times — Yaupon Garden Club coverage: https://www.nmbtimes.com/
