From left, Butler Garden Club members Pat Montag, Karen Faust, Mary Reefer and Janet Platt talk before their lunch at Christ Community Methodist Church last week during the club’s meeting about its upcoming mushroom sandwich sale at the May 20 Flower and Food Fest in Butler’s Alameda Park. Shane Potter/Butler Eagle

Something will be missing from the mushroom sandwiches the Butler Garden Club plans to sell at the May 20 Butler Flower and Food Fest at Alameda Park.

The sandwiches still will be filled with mushrooms and onion, they still will contain a secret sauce and they still will be grilled to toasty perfection.

But the club will be missing 40-plus-year member Carole Dickson, who headed the sandwich project for dozens of years at the event, which will be staged this year in the park’s Odd Fellows Loop in conjunction with Butler County Parks & Recreation and the Penn State Master Gardeners of Butler County. The event serves as a major fundraiser for the Master Gardeners.

This will be the first year the Butler Garden Club will be at the Flower and Food Fest since the COVID-19 pandemic and the first year without Dickson.

Club member Karen Faust said Dickson held a degree in home economics from Penn State University and was the glue that made the mushroom sandwich sale more than a fundraiser — it was a labor of love.

Faust said Dickson even made the aprons with the initials BGC that club members will wear when they sell the mushroom sandwiches.

Dickson passed away in May. Faust and the other Butler Garden Club members will honor her memory when they resume the sale of the club’s signature sandwich after being absent from the fest for three years.

“We use grilled white mushrooms, green onions, a beef-based seasoning, a little flour and a lot of butter. The secret ingredient is the beef base,” club member Mary Reefer of Butler said.

The mixture is placed between two pieces of white bread, and then grilled like a grilled cheese sandwich. The club will offer grilled cheese sandwiches, too.

From left to right Mary Reefer, Janet Platt and Pat Montag prepare to cut a quiche for their lunch at Christ Methodist Church on Thursday morning as members of the Butler Garden Club have a meeting about their upcoming mushroom sandwich sale at the May 20 Flower and Food Fest in Butler’s Alameda Park. They are wearing aprons made by late club member Carole Dickson, who passed away in May. Shane Potter/Butler Eagle

Faust said her club used to sell barbecue sandwiches at the Flower and Food Fest until one day in the early 1980s when club members traveled to Pittsburgh’s Mellon Park for the May Mart.

Members noticed a booth selling mushroom sandwiches and having stellar sales.

Faust said members were able to obtain the recipe and tucked it away for future use.

Discussions of the upcoming plant sale dominated last week’s meeting of the Butler Garden Club at Christ Community Methodist Church, 205 N. Duffy Road.

Faust said the club, a member of the Federated Garden Clubs, has been in existence for more than 90 years. It’s 35 members meet monthly for a meal, a meeting and a guest lecturer.

Reefer also is a Master Gardener, one of 100 in the county, so the upcoming flower fest is doubly important to her.

“You have to take an intense, yearlong course,” Reefer said. “And then you have to pass a test. To maintain certification you have to donate so much time to the Ask the Gardener phone line or help in the eight demonstration gardens.”

Faust said the plant sale at Alameda Park will feature mostly native perennials. “That’s the big thing in gardening today,” said Faust. “They have those and pollinator plants to promote the declining insect population.”