Stenton 2024

News from Zone V on June 21, 2024

The Philadelphia Committee of The Garden Club of America awarded a Fertilizer Fund Grant this year to Historic Stenton Mansion, a National Historic Landmark and the c. 1730 home of William Penn’s Secretary, James Logan. The historic grounds of Stenton witnessed some of the earliest efforts in the fields of botany and horticulture and include a colonial revival landscape and garden designed by John Caspar Sister in 1911. The garden was the setting for the founding meeting of The Garden Club of America in 1913.

The grant was awarded to plant flowering plants and sedges to the landscape immediately surrounding the new Dinah Memorial.
In 2018, the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (NSCDA/PA), who have been administering Stenton since 1899, was awarded a Pew Center for Arts and Heritage grant for a community-inclusive project to create a new memorial to Dinah. Dinah was a woman who was enslaved at Stenton and is credited with saving the house from burning by the British during the revolution. Once in place, the new memorial needed to be connected to the existent surrounding landscape which includes a meadow that was created from the 2015 GCA Founders Fund Award. A plan to incorporate the Dinah Memorial garden was designed by Landscape Architect Claudia Levy, in consultation with Stenton’s Garden and Grounds Committee.

A public unveiling and celebration of the new Dinah memorial was held on April 20, 2024