In 1968, the New England Spring Flower Show exhibited for the first time at Suffolk Downs Race Track, and The Garden Club of the Back Bay was there, winning a blue ribbon for its attractive back yard showing a little foreign car in a lattice work enclosure. President and founder Laura Dwight and Vice President Mrs. Paul Bishop gave a tea in for the members in May of that year to congratulate them on the award. We have found a copy of the Flower Show program for that year on eBay, hoping to gather more information, but we were not listed among the area Garden Clubs exhibiting – perhaps we were a last minute addition, or perhaps we have the year wrong. Club member Elisabeth Lay remembers helping the late Dr. John Twaddle, a radiologist at New England Baptist Hospital, and his wife, Garden Club of the Back Bay member Ann Twaddle, tote things over to the exhibit, and believes the small Fiat was on loan from a local automobile dealer, since the gasoline would have had to be drained.
The Twaddles put the ideas together, and cut and assembled the lattice in the back of their home at 241 Marlborough Street. As Elisabeth says: “It was an early idea for those living here as well as those in the suburbs of what could be done in a lovely way with plants, window boxes in a Boston alley space behind a building with still enough room for a car … I remember suburbanites really liking it. ” If anyone out there has a picture of the exhibit to share, or more information on how we came to exhibit, we would be most grateful. The image below, from www.theparisienne.fr, is not our car, but gives us an idea of what could have been shown. Email info@gardenclubbackbay.org.
