The Gathering Place and Garden serves as a tribute to Idabelle Smith Firestone and as a place for making memories, gathering as a community to celebrate music and theatre, and enjoying the color and fragrance of a garden. Mrs. Firestone was more than the devoted wife of Harvey S. Firestone; she was a homemaker, caring mother, composer, and philanthropist whose admiration for flowers and love of music shaped many achievements in the later years of her long and fruitful life. A gifted composer, she wrote many popular romantic songs of the 1930's and 1940's, and her songs "In My Garden" and "If I Could Tell You" became the opening and closing themes for the nationally broadcast "Voice of Firestone" radio and television programs. In 1948, she was elected to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. Her passion for flowers was also honored when David Burpee, an internationally known plant hybridist, developed the largest and most colorful French marigold cultivar of the day and named it the "Idabelle Firestone Marigold." Although the seed bank for that cultivar has been lost, the garden includes other French marigold varieties as well as columbine, phlox, and roses, flowers she wove throughout her song lyrics and her life.