Ellen H. “Ellie” Kelly, a Baltimore civic leader who was a trailblazer in environmental affairs and had mobilized the Garden Club of America into a respected governmental lobby, both locally and nationally, died Nov. 16 from complications of leukemia at Springwell Retirement Community in Mount Washington.

The Ruxton resident was 94.

Ellen Whitmore Harvey, daughter of F. Barton Harvey Sr., chairman of Stump, Harvey, Cook Inc., and Rose Lindsay Hopkins Harvey, a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised on Brightside Road in Ruxton.

“I grew up next door to Ellie in Ruxton who was six months older,” said former Republican State Sen. C.A. Porter Hopkins, a cousin, who is also a conservationist.

“We did everything together. We planted trees and we noticed the change in living and the countryside in Ruxton. There was the train, Lake Roland, the streetcar to Cochran’s Pond, all of which had been part of the 19th century,” he said.

“We noticed we were seeing the extension of suburbia and Ellie cared about what was happening around us and did so all of her life. She used her education and enthusiasm to make a difference,” he said. “She was always interested in what was happening in Baltimore and Maryland. She was just extraordinary.”

She was a 1947 graduate of St. Timothy’s School in Catonsville, attended Vassar College from 1947 to 1950, and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Boston University in 1957. She later obtained a master’s degree in literary arts in 1975 from the Johns Hopkins University.

Mrs. Kelly married William Boulton “Bo” Kelly Jr., an architect, in 1950 and the couple moved to Baltimore in 1957, eventually settling into a home on Rolandvue Road in Ruxton, where they raised their six children.

Her husband established the architectural firm of Tatar & Kelly Inc., and after it dissolved, founded Kelly Associates in 1972, where she worked until 1975 in public relations and marketing.

Mrs. Kelly then worked for Architectural Conservators Ltd., conducting historical research and assisting her husband in the restoration of Davidge Hall at the University of Maryland School of Medicine that dates to 1812.

Mrs. Kelly immersed herself in civic affairs, working with numerous organizations and serving on the Florence Crittenton and Mental Health Association, and the Family and Children’s Society boards.

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H. Mebane “Meb” Turner was the longtime president of the University of Baltimore who later headed Boys’ Latin School. (HUTCHINS/Check with Baltimore Sun Photo)

She had been on the Citizens Planning and Housing Association board from 1963 to 1977, and was a former vice president of the organization, as well as a member of the Johns Hopkins Metropolitan and Research Policy Committee.

Conservation and environmental issues were also a focus of Mrs. Kelly’s activism, which hearkened back to her youth and as a member of the St. George’s Garden Club.

“The truth is, I wasn’t ready for garden club membership when I joined. It was the 1960s, a period of great urban engagement in places like Baltimore,” she said in a 2016 interview with the Garden Club of America.

“I came to conservation as a result of civic involvement, often alongside my husband, who was an activist architect devoted to historic preservation and appropriate urban development,” she said. “I began to care about plants and hort via policy issues, and testified before Congress in the 1970s to widen the lists of plants protected by the Endangered Species Act.”

In 1975, she founded the Maryland chapter of the nature Conservancy and served on its board for a decade.

“She mobilized the Garden Club of America into a respected lobby, both locally and nationally on environmental legislation,” said a son, William B. Kelly Jr., of Wilmington, Delaware. “The earliest such effort resulted in the Clean Air Act in the late 1970s under President Jimmy Carter, where the young senator from Delaware, Joe Biden, sent her a congratulatory note.”

One of the things she was most proud of was the Garden Club of America’s role in getting the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act signed into law by President Carter and that she had been invited to the White House to witness the ceremony.

Mrs. Kelly’s issues ranged from redwood legislation, toxic substances, water pollution and reform of the Highway Beautification Act.

“One of Mom’s favorite early poems, supporting her efforts on the Highway Beautification Act, came from Ogden Nash: ‘I think that I will never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all,’” her son said.

[ George R. Vaughan, retired Westinghouse Electric design engineer and Korean War veteran, dies ]

In 1982, Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening appointed Mrs. Kelly to the board of the Maryland Environmental Trust where she served until 2001.

From 1982 to 1994, she was a member of the National Parks and Conservation Association board in Washington, and is emeritus board chair of the Rachel Carson Foundation.

Locally, she was legislative chair of the Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland from 1998 to 2007; a member of the Irvine Nature Center board, and a member of the Jones Falls Watershed Association.

Other interests included being the founder and later vice president of the Women’s Committee at the Walters Art Museum; chairman of the Friends Advisory Council at the Johns Hopkins Sheridan library; and a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Historic Trust.

Mrs. Kelly enjoyed playing tennis and summering at “The Beach House,” the Fishers Island, New York, home that her husband had designed in the Modernist style in 1969, and where she had been president of the Fishers Island Conservancy from 2002 to 2006.

Her husband died in 2012.

She was a communicant of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, 5603 N. Charles St., where a memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Jan. 6.

In addition to William Kelly Jr., she is survived by another son, George W. Kelly of Denver; four daughters, Ellen Curran Wooten of Annapolis, Lucy K. Haus of Lutherville, Katherine F.B.K. Crowley of Magnolia, Massachusetts, and Jean K. Cook of Madison, Connecticut; a sister, Dr. Jean Harvey Baker of Owings Mills; 19 grandchildren; and 13 great-grandchildren.