Today's Hort Club is a professional and social club comprised of fifty plus members and two faculty advisors. Professional development activites include attending student competitions, conferences, trade shows, and career fairs. Around MSU the Hort Club has been involved in many service activities, is involved in the annual homecoming parade, and organizes and hosts the club's annual Spring Show complete with an installed landscape design, plant sale, and list of guest speakers. With so much going on, it is very important to remember how we got to be the club we are today.

The MSU Horticulture Department has a long and rich history beginning with being the first land grant university founded in 1855. The department has been graced with great professors such as William J. Beal who taught at MSU for 40 years and established the garden known today as the W.J. Beal Botanical Garden in 1873 and continues to be the "the oldest continuously operated university botanical garden of its kind in the United States." Liberty Hyde Bailey who was a student of Professor Beal's was the first Department Chair of the new Horticulture Department in 1883 and is known as the "Dean of American Horticulture."

The first student Horticulture Club was organized in 1901 and met on Wednesday nights, as we continue to do today. The goal of the club was "gaining a better knowledge in practical, scientific horticulture, to provide diversion from the regular routine of work by bringing in outside speakers of horticultural reputation; and to foster the fraternal spirit between the teachers and students of the Horticulture Department." In 1947 the club was reorganized into the following commodity groups: floriculture, pomology (fruit), vegetable crops, and nursery management, and from time to time all the groups would come together to meet. (Horticulture at Michigan State University: A History by Dr. George Kessler 1984)

The first Horticultural Show organized by the students occurred in 1908 and continued to be an annual event for many years. These events were held in the Agriculture Hall Pavilion and the Armory, probably Demonstration Hall. The first shows were oriented to production of crops with prizes ranging from spray guns to bags of lime and sulfur awarded to the best apple cutlivars, for example. (Frank Dennis)