The Cedarburg Garden Club was founded in 1957 by Rita Bert, a long time Cedarburg resident.  While raising five children, Rita started the club as a way to get out of the house and spend time doing her favorite hobbies: gardening and crafts.

The monthly club meetings started out in members’ homes. As the club membership grew, they started meeting in various meeting rooms around town. The Cedarburg Garden Club now meets monthly at the Cedarburg American Legion on the third Tuesday of each month.

Over the years, the club has been involved in many activities and fundraisers. At the start, it concentrated on Rita’s two hobbies, gardening and crafts. As the years went on, the club focused more on crafts relating to gardening. Some years, members did flower arranging and judging at flower shows around the state. Once a year, the members went on a trip to gardens and garden centers throughout the state. Monthly, an expert in the horticulture field was invited to give a program on a related topic such as perennial planting and annual selection, weed id, herbal benefits, garden art, hybridization, and much more. To this day, the club still sponsors this program once a month. The program is open to the public.

For many years, the club members exchanged plants among each other every spring. That activity led to a plant sale, which is now held annually. For over 20 years, the Cedarburg Garden Club has been selling home grown plants to the public every spring.

Fundraising and education has also been important to the club.  The fundraisers provide education to the members and public, as well as monetary benefits to horticulture students, organizations involved with nature, and city gardens.

Because of Rita Bert, today there are many long time members (some as long as 40 years!) who continue to pass along their knowledge and enthusiasm of gardening to new members.