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DOWAGIAC — A local organization is honoring a long-time member who passed away.

The Town and Country Garden Club of Dowagiac will be honoring the late Polly Judd by planting 36 planters in the downtown Dowagiac area at 2 p.m. Sunday.

Judd was known as a patriotic person and would show up to many club events wearing red, white and blue. To honor Judd, the club will be planting 36 red, white and blue planters downtown, at the train depot and along Commercial Street. Each flower pot will consist of red sun guineas in the center, blue and white petunias around the edges of the plot and a trailing goldilocks vine. The flowers are purchased from Sally’s Greenhouse, 5748 M-140, Eau Claire.

The club will also plant flags for Memorial Day and again for Labor Day.

The Town and Country Garden Club of Dowagiac has 26 active members, with some members unable to consistently attend due to health. The club hosts a plant sale three times a year and participates in other activities through the community, including decorating the planters for fall with pine branches and Christmas colors, cleaning and weeding the library and Beckwith Theatre flowerbeds, plus maintaining the Blue Star Memorial at Riverside Cemetery. The club also does the “Adopt-a-Highway” on M-62 West, where Judd could often be seen wearing white pants, a red shirt and blue earrings.

A member of the club for roughly 20 years, Judd was well-known in the Dowagiac community. She was the former secretary of Dowagiac Middle School, when the campus was still on Main Street and was an active member of First United Methodist Church, 326 N. Lowe.

Judd was instrumental in helping start a greenhouse club at Dowagiac Union High School, where students learned how to plan, plant, and sell many vegetables and flower plants. The greenhouse also had a pond that the students cleaned out and started up again.

“She meant a lot to us in the club,” said garden club member Dee Herman. “She was a ray of sunshine. She would send out cards to members and make sure everyone was well. She did tap dancing and skydiving, too. I told her that when I grow up, I want to be like her.”