Residents

The Garden Club is Looking for New Members

The Garden Club of Bentleyville is accepting new members! If you love gardening and would be interested in meeting others who share this interest, consider joining our organization!

Our club was founded in 1994. We meet at 9:00 a.m. on the third Wednesday of the month, September through June. Our programs are diverse and include talented, knowledgeable speakers, hands-on workshops, garden tours, field trips to a variety of venues in the Greater Cleveland area, and participation in activities offered by the Cleveland Botanical Garden and Holden Arboretum. The Club is an affiliate member of Holden Forests and Gardens and a member of The Garden Club of Ohio and National Garden Clubs. We are active in the Village of Bentleyville, helping to maintain the landscaping and various beds around the Village Hall; and decorating the Village for the holiday. You may have noticed Daffodil Hill as well as our pollinator perennial bed on the corner near Village Hall. Our annual dues are $45.

If you would like to be a part of this interesting organization, please call Bentleyville Village Hall at 440-247-5055, and leave your name, phone #, and your interest in the Garden Club and they will relay that message to us.

The Village of Bentleyville has been given a watercolor painting of a former Chagrin River Bridge. That iron bridge, part of Chagrin River Road, crossed the Chagrin River until its collapse in the 1970s. While that bridge was never repaired or replaced by Cuyahoga County, it remains part of Bentleyville history, as were the bridges in the same location that preceded it.

Nick Trudick of Novelty, Ohio, commissioned the watercolor from his then neighbor on Bentleyville Road, Alfred Howell. Howell, an English born artist, arrived in the United States in 1929. He served as the Supervisor of Art Education for the Cleveland Public School System and was a professor of art at Case Western Reserve University. He is noted for his local work in watercolor and sculpture of Chagrin Falls Village scenes and of the local waterfalls.

Weeks after Howell completed the newly donated painting, the iron bridge, which is its subject, unexpectedly collapsed. This is its final image. The Village of Bentleyville is immensely grateful to Mr. Trudick for making it possible for the Village to share this piece of Village history. The painting has been hung in a place of honor in the Village Council Chamber. Other historical items relating to the bridge and its predecessors are presently in the collection at the Chagrin History Center. We look forward to working with the History Center to share more of the story as we continue our research.