Sharing The Bounty
Park Hill Garden Walk To Feature Plant Swap-And-Share; Eight Beauties To Be Featured This Year
By Micki Amick | Park Hill Garden Walk Organizer
The annual and much-loved Park Hill Garden Walk is fast approaching — Sunday, June 7 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
This year’s eight featured (and beautiful) gardens are in the area between Glencoe and Oneida streets, from 29th to 16th avenues. Your ticket will be your entry into all eight gardens, where you can see the many ways that Park Hill gardeners have created intimate spaces, including in smaller gardens.
Each garden will also showcase artists who work in media from painting, printing, and paper to ceramics, glass and metal sculpture.
An exciting feature this year will be a special kind of plant sale. Imagine a type of thrift store — but for plants. One of the featured garden sites will host the sale of plant seedlings or transplants, known as “starts.” Attendees are invited to bring and share starts from their own gardens. For example, do you have too many iris bulbs, or extra seedlings from thinning early planting or during spring garden clean-up?
You can share your starts and surplus flora to help generate funds to support the Greater Park Hill Food Pantry. Anytime after May 1, bring them in small containers with some soil to 6645 17th Ave., where a table will be set up for your plants. Gardener Colleen Gill, the organizer and host of this fund-raising plant sale, will take over their care after you drop off the plants. If possible, include helpful information, including the type of plant, color, size, whether it needs sun or shade, etc. Gill suggests that emailing her (colleen@nutrition-foundations.com) a picture of the mother plant would also be helpful.
Your donated starts and plants are considered in-kind charitable donations based on fair market value. You can be proud to contribute to our community and to see your plants for sale during the Garden Walk. You may even see your plants growing happily in their new home throughout the neighborhood. Gill feels that the plant sale at her featured garden will help neighbors get their gardens started at affordable prices, and will help support the food pantry. Her 13-year-old grandson was the inspiration for this new event, and you can find him during the Garden Walk selling lemonade and muffins.
Tickets for the Garden Walk go on sale May 9 and can be purchased at Spinelli’s Market (23rd and Dexter), City Floral (14th and Kearney), the Park Hill Library (Montview and Dexter) or online at parkhillgardenwalk.org.
The Garden Walk committee is seeking volunteers to staff three-hour shifts during the event. If you volunteer, you can have both a fun day and help the Park Hill Community. Please contact Kate Blanas if you would like to volunteer: klblanas@gmail.com.