A.V.I.S.’s Avonlea Beautification Campaign

A.V.I.S.’s Avonlea Beautification Campaign made the appearance of the settlement a shared civic responsibility, translating local pride into planting, upkeep, and persuasion. Its progress could be measured in new trees and in widening support: by the spring Arbor Day, the society had forty members and had arranged for two hundred ornamental trees to be set out. The hailstorm that followed showed how vulnerable such work was to forces beyond the community’s control, but it did not erase the campaign’s larger ambition to make Avonlea’s roadsides and public grounds more inviting.

A Local Improvement Society

The campaign’s methods were practical and communal. Members planted trees themselves or arranged for others to do so, while speaking with landowners, trustees, and other local groups about improvements to roadsides and shared spaces. In Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe’s account of its progress, the society had moved beyond an experiment: older residents were taking an interest, and people at White Sands were discussing the possibility of starting a similar organization. The hoped-for result was not simply a collection of attractive plantings, but a settlement whose public appearance reflected sustained cooperation.

Outside encouragement helped make the case. Visitors from the hotel had praised Avonlea’s roadsides as prettier than those elsewhere on Prince Edward Island, and their approval was credited with bringing Elisha Wright around to the society’s cause. The praise gave the campaign a concrete measure of what local work could accomplish, while also prompting hopes that other farmers would follow the example of planting ornamental trees and hedges along their road fronts.

Planting Roadsides and Shared Grounds

The campaign’s roadside plans included specific commitments from local landowners. Major Spencer decided to plant a row of white birches along the road front of his farm as an encouragement to the society. William Bell planned a spruce hedge beside his road front and up his lane. These proposed plantings extended the campaign beyond a single garden or meeting place: individual properties could contribute to a more continuous, cared-for landscape along the roads.

Other improvements involved spaces used by the wider community. Trees planted on the church grounds were flourishing, and the school trustees had promised to fence in the school grounds the following year. Anne hoped to mark that work with an Arbor Day at which every pupil would plant a tree, and to establish a garden in a corner beside the road. The plan joined beautification to participation: schoolchildren would not only encounter an improved setting but take part in creating it.

The society also prompted discussion of the graveyard. Anne hoped the Ladies’ Aid Society would take up its improvement, since the work would require a subscription and she doubted A.V.I.S. could undertake it after the hall affair. The episode shows both the campaign’s reach and its limits: its members could put neglected places into public conversation, but some projects depended on other groups and on funds the society could not readily supply.

Growth, Resistance, and Reversal

By Arbor Day, the organization had forty members. Each member set out, or arranged to have set out, five ornamental trees, bringing the total to two hundred young trees. The scale made the society’s progress visible across Avonlea, and the celebration turned its individual acts of planting into a collective undertaking.

Not every proposal succeeded. The old Boulter house remained an unresolved obstacle: Levi refused to have it removed, apparently out of contrariness, and Gilbert Blythe had given up hope of persuading him. When Julia Bell wanted to send another committee, Anne instead favored leaving him alone. The disagreement marks a boundary to the society’s approach. Cooperation and repeated persuasion could win support, but they did not give the Improvers authority over a resistant owner or his property.

The Hailstorm and the Campaign’s Legacy

The planting’s most severe setback came on May 23. After a hot, still school day, Anne dismissed her pupils when she heard thunder, so they could get home before the storm. Hail then covered the ground in a deep white layer. When it melted several days later, the damage was plain: crops and garden growth had been cut down, apple-tree blossoms stripped, and branches wrenched away. Of the two hundred trees planted by the Improvers, by far the greater number were snapped off or torn to shreds.

The storm made the landscape itself an active limit on civic plans. A campaign built through many small acts of care could produce visible change, yet the young trees and other growth remained exposed to a sudden weather disaster. The contrast between the celebratory Arbor Day and the shattered plantings lends the society’s work a fragile, hard-won quality. Its achievements were not guaranteed to endure; they depended on continued communal effort after damage as well as before it. Even so, the society had already secured commitments, widened interest in local improvement, and brought public spaces and roadsides into a shared conversation about what Avonlea might become.