Members of the Garden Club of Bermuda cleaned up part of the race route ahead of the Bermuda Marathon Weekend.

In addition to their efforts to keep the island beautiful for locals and visitors, they also donated $5,000 to charity Keep Bermuda Beautiful.

“The Garden Club is pleased to make a donation to KBB in support of KBB’s endeavour to work alongside the America’s Cup event this summer,” the club’s president, Anna Fulton, said as she presented the cheque at a meeting on Friday.

“Our $5,000 donation will assist KBB executive director, Anne Hyde, in ensuring that there is training for the sustainability volunteers in First Mates programme in partnership with ACBDA and ACEA.

Ms Fulton added: “Our club has shared a longtime relationship with KBB, which it considers part of its offspring. This partnership includes Garden Club man-hours usually given for a specific cleanup event. Most recently a small group of our members volunteered to clean up an area of the International Marathon Race Weekend.”

And Ms Hyde said: “I am very happy to receive this sponsorship so that I can devote time during the America’s Cup to assisting with training First Mate volunteers on the environmental sustainability measures that the Event Authority are putting into place.”

Garden Club members have donned their gardening gloves and come out to do a KBB litter cleanup in advance of the Bermuda Marathon Weekend for several years.

This year the cleanup area took place along Palmetto Road from North Shore to Dock Hill, which is part of the route to the finish at the National Sports Centre.

The two organisations share a close bond since the Garden Club formed the Keep Bermuda Beautiful Committee in 1962.

Two years later the Committee decided there was enough need to set up as a separate charity. A Garden Club representative sits on the Board of Directors for KBB.