Alice Eastwood Annual Awards

Over the years one of the primary missions of the San Francisco Garden Club is to provide awards in the name of Alice Eastwood to deserving students in the Horticultural, Botany/Floristry and Environmental Department at San Francisco City College. Every spring the students submit an application together with samples of their work and a brief commentary about how they would use the award money. The students are then interviewed by the Alice Eastwood Award Committee, which selects the winners. In 2019 there was a total of 10 winners. The winners receive their checks at an end-of-the-semester ceremony at CCSF and then are honored at the club’s annual meeting in May. Many award recipients have gone on to present at Bouquet to Arts and establish careers as successful floral designers.  

Alice Eastwood was the first female curator of Golden Gate Park and is credited with saving over 1900 rare species from the CA Academy of Science building as it was burning following the 1906 earthquake. She single-handedly kept running back into the fire and grabbing as many specimens as possible, putting them in her car and then running back for more. Once she had them, she drove out to the ocean and waited out the fire until she could get them into a safe place — her home. 

The Club also honored Alice Eastwood by establishing a garden in her name in the San Francisco Botanical Garden. A reception gives the members a chance to visit in a beautiful spot that they were responsible for making possible. The garden is to the right as you enter the SFBG and is a part of the Celebration Garden which the club also helped to sponsor.