Leigh McGonagle with her parents at her graduation from Southern Cayuga High School.
The Southern Cayuga Garden Club has supported an annual scholarship for graduating high school seniors for the past 25 years. In celebration of this 25th anniversary, I had two conversations. The first was with one of our first scholarship winners, Leigh McGonagle, and the second was with our 2025 winner, Abigail White. Scholarships are awarded to students who are furthering their studies in horticulture, agriculture, biology or related fields and have demonstrated an interest in participating in their chosen field. Their stories highlight the sophistication of our winners’ education and what they bring to our community — both now and in the future.
Leigh McGonagle graduated from Southern Cayuga Central School District in 2006. When we discussed her college application process I was laughing with Leigh as she explained, “I applied to 10 different universities with 10 different majors. I didn’t really know what I wanted to study, so I decided the first university to accept me would decide my major. It worked well. I was an early acceptance to Cornell in the field of landscape architecture. There were only 14 students in the program. I lived in the international dorm as I always have longed for international connections. Cornell helped shape my future.” Leigh spent summers working in garden centers and florist shops to learn more about plants, and graduated in the winter of 2010.
For the next 10 years, Leigh tried out a variety of different careers. In 2012, she worked for a high-end residential landscape contracting firm in Cape Cod and was the only woman of 80 field crew. “I worked in my father’s software company for a time doing operations and marketing work.” Both experiences began to shape a small version of what the business she wanted to build.
Abigail White with her parents at her graduation from Southern Cayuga High School.
Leigh’s Poplar Point Studio is a gardening service whose mission is to “plant joy” in the Finger Lakes. She has 20 employees and 90% of them are women. Leigh shapes her business around three goals: autonomy of her time, credibility in the landscaping industry and financial stability. In the eight years prior to opening her business, she learned that taking care of both your clients and your employees was the foundation of any success. “My favorite part of the day is hearing my employees laughing when they return from a day of work.” At the end of this conversation, Leigh summarized her post-high school learning. “I wandered, and that’s OK. Finally, I choose to come home and build my business.” I encourage all readers to visit Leigh’s website at poplarpointstudio.com.
Abigail White and I began our conversation with her experience on her family dairy farm. “I am the seventh generation in my mother’s family living on the Elkendale Farm founded in 1868. Today’s dairy farm has 600 cows, and I grew up helping my mother in the calf barn. I have thrown a lot of hay bales in my life, and the haymow is not the coolest place to be in the summer. As I became more involved in the family farm, I began to ask questions about our work and its environmental impact.”
Elaine Meyers
In Abby’s application, she cited her mother’s involvement with the Cayuga Marketing sustainability committee that hosts meetings at dairy farms located across the Finger Lakes. “These meetings have given me the opportunity to not only learn about the farms around me, but also the various methods they are using to make their operations more sustainable and environmentally friendly. My parents are very active in this movement as well.”
We ended our conversation with a discussion of Abby’s college goals. “At Cornell, I hope to make friends with lots of people and develop relationships with faculty. So many of my goals and our family’s work with sustainability have depended on Cornell’s research, so I especially want to work with sustainability and environmental research. I hope my Cornell time will include international travel, and New Zealand would be a first choice.” After graduation, Abby sees herself branching out into possible studies in environmental law or possibilities she will discover in the next four years. Our interview ends with Abby’s confidence that whatever path she takes with her career and education, she will eventually come home to the family farm.
I hope these interviews convey why the Southern Cayuga Garden Club works to support our scholarship programs and value the resources that many of our winners bring back to our community. Leigh McGonagle presented a program for our club in April, and we will be touring her gardens this September. If you are interested in joining the Southern Cayuga Garden Club, please contact me by email at elaine.meyers4@gmail.com.
Elaine Meyers, of King Ferry, is a member of the boards of the Southern Cayuga Anne Frank Tree Project, Finger Lakes Library System and Southern Cayuga Garden Club. She works with the Emily Howland Elementary School literacy and media committees and is the author of “Iron Pants,” published in 2022.
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Leigh McGonagle with her parents at her graduation from Southern Cayuga High School.
Abigail White with her parents at her graduation from Southern Cayuga High School.
Elaine Meyers
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