A wealth of history of has been preserved thanks to the efforts of some local garden club members and the Birmingham Botanical Gardens.

Members of the north Jefferson County-based Blue Star Garden Club recently met at the botanical gardens with scores of old yearbooks and other annuals to keep at the botanical gardens library in a special archives room.

“We had almost every year,” said club member Pat Akers. The club brought the collection of yearbooks belonging to former club member Louise Jones; her collection dates back as far as 1952. Jones died in 2009, but her children donated her garden club memorabilia to Blue Star.

In addition to yearbooks, the club’s collection also includes many years of North End Council of Garden Clubs’ flower show books and “Horntensia” magazine, published by the Alabama Garden Club.

The club was assisted by Jason Kirby, a document specialist at the botanical gardens’ library.

“Jason is taking all the staples out of the yearbooks and replacing them with sewing and stitches. There’s a lot of work to it, but they’re going to be better preserved.”

Each book will be stored in an envelope and filed in the climate-controlled Archives Room of the library.

“It was a lot of work getting this together. It took nearly five and a half months,” said club member Evangeline Sloan.

Akers said Kirby also showed the club documents that deated as far back as the 1600s that includied things like pressed flowers, seed catalogs and almanacs.

“Jason also shared helpful information for preserving future club history such as the proper papers and techniques to use as well as items to avoid such as cardboard and construction paper which have too much acid,” said Akers.

Anyone may view the items at the library, but only club members may check the items out for short periods of time.

“One main goal for the Archives Room is to preserve the history of all Garden Clubs in Jefferson County,” said Akers.