Scholarship Committee
The Scholarship Committee reflects the club’s mission to develop and stimulate interest and participation in horticulture, floral design, civic beautification, and environmental concerns.
Scholarships Awarded
2025
We’re thrilled to introduce this year’s Lenox Garden Club scholarship recipients!
Elijah Jones, a Taconic High School graduate, is heading to Berkshire Community College this fall—and is spending his summer as Head Gardener at Berkshire Country Club! He told us he loves the coleus for its ease and beauty, and credits Taconic’s CTE program with opening his eyes to the joy of horticulture. Elijah’s proud aunt joined him for the award—her excitement was contagious!
Fritz Sanders, fresh from Wahconah High School, is taking a gap year to pursue his dream of Nordic skiing at the national level. After making the Junior National Nordic Team and earning All-American status, Fritz is off to Montana to train full-time and study part-time. His goal? A Division I student-athlete slot, with WPI still in the mix for next fall.
2024
On May 30, 2024, Scholarship chair Mary Jane Piazza attended Wahconah Regional High School awards ceremony in Dalton, MA to present the third annual Lenox Garden Club scholarship to graduating senior Aidan Garcia. Based on essays submitted by four local high school students, the committee chose Mr. Garcia, who plans to study Biology with a concentration in Environmental science and will attend Middlebury College in the fall.
2023
The Lenox Garden Club $500 Scholarship winner for 2023 was Ms. Tia Kareh of Hoosac Valley High School, now a Freshman at MCLA. In her application, Tia states an early interest in being outside and “getting hands deep in nature” which also brings her a sense of peace.
As a middle schooler, she took part in a science fair, creating a rain gutter growing-environment for urban spaces. Tia participated in a high school summer garden internship—planting, watering and harvesting, continuing her interest in food systems and agriculture—as she states “creating life where there was nothing.” Tia dual-enrolled
in a college class on environmental sustainability where she created a hydroponic “ecocolumn” – a self-contained vertical terrestrial habitat comprised of a compost unit, which filtered downward into a sustaining aquatic habitat for fish.
Tia says that her curiosity in science, food systems, and agriculture has enforced how much the environment must be preserved—in addition to how much comfort and peace there is in nature.
2022
In 2022 our first $500 Lenox Garden Club Scholarship winner, Abigail Webster, then a senior at Berkshire Arts Technology (BART) Charter School, sent the following unsolicited email to reaffirm the value of the club’s commitment to helping worthy local high-school seniors pursue their horticulture-related goals in their chosen field of study.
