Photo credit: Vitus Konter
Members of the Bay View Garden and Yard Society and the Bay View Neighborhood Association planting the new garden at the KK Triangle.
Part of my pandemic “Safer at Home” loll and lounge ensemble is a green sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo of the Bay View Garden and Yard Society. It was a gift I received from the group a decade or so ago when I first wrote about them. Founded in 1995, the “BV GAYS” were dedicated to a mission of beautifying Bay View through sharing their love of plants and gardening with others. Sadly, they garden no more.
I recall driving past them as they toiled in straw sun hats and shorts, tending the broad garden plot of the Bay View bus shelter (a triangular island intersection at Lincoln, Howell and Kinnickinnc Avenues once with a charming garden along one side, it is now a concrete and metal “art-stop” devoid of flora I disaffectionately call the Bay View Hiroshima Memorial Bus Shelter). The BV GAYS were also responsible for other public gardening projects including flower beds at Milwaukee Fire Department’s Engine 11 Fire Station on KK, the WWII Memorial at Kinnickinnc and Russell Avenues as well as several other locations.
In collaboration with Milwaukee County Parks and the South Shore Farmers’ Market (where they frequently held gardening demonstrations), BV GAYS held an annual plant sale that attracted local vendors selling a full array of annuals, perennials, trees, shrubs as well as herbs and vegetables. It became Bay View’s go-to event for amateur horticulturalists to find not only their favorite plants but also to exchange tips and information with like-minded enthusiasts. The last Bay View Plant Sale held under the auspices of the BV GAYS was in 2017. However, it continues today as an independent event with a social media page to keep its followers up to date on all things green and flowering.
Neighborhood Rainbows
Although there’s no mention of BV GAYS on the Milwaukee’s LGBT history website, its legacy is a decades-long chapter in our city’s LGBTQ narrative. Founded in the heyday of the Rainbow Associations that sprung up in various neighborhoods, it remained active longer than all but the one in Washington Heights. What set BV GAYS apart from those other organizations was its mission to share knowledge and beautify through community volunteerism and visibility.
In my search for information about the end of BV GAYS, a member of a current South Shore gardening group suggested its membership simply aged out or left the area. In fact, I do know of some former members moved to other Milwaukee neighborhoods or out of state. Still, it seems odd that an organization active for over 20 years should simply fade away. Another explanation might be that certain groups once integral to LGBTQ social interaction may no longer be as necessary as they once were. In the decades since the founding of BV GAYS much has changed. And, while some aspects of our lives remain within the confines of LGBTQ sensibilities, others thrive on a broader assimilated with like-minded people regardless of sexual orientation. Perhaps BV GAYS accelerated that process and became superfluous because of it.
Still, I wish BV GAYS were still around. As a BV gay myself, I’d rather confess my landscaping failings to my own rather than broadcast them to the world. Some things should remain entre nous…we have a reputation to uphold, after all.
