Garden Walk ’23

If you are interested in either starting a garden, learning a new way to garden, or would like to meet fellow gardeners in Crawfordsville, stop by our Garden Walk on July 29th! This event will take place from 10 am – 12 pm starting at 409 E Jefferson Street in Crawfordsville. We will have multiple stops in Crawfordsville with all types of gardens and gardeners.

At each stop, the gardeners themselves will be the host of their own garden and will be able to answer any questions. This event is for gardeners of all experiences as we have hosts that have varied levels of gardening experience. For this walk, we will be walking together from garden to garden to allow gardeners to meet as many other gardeners in the area as possible and to allow the hosts to attend each other’s gardens.

Garden Walk Agenda – July 29^th from 10 AM- 12 PM

Sign -in and introductions start at 10 am at 409 E Jefferson St. Crawfordsville

Introductions

John Walter is the Head of Maintenance at Wabash College. His backyard garden contains a series of raised beds he has constructed from reclaimed lumber. His goal as a gardener is to give his kids an easy and friendly way to learn about food. His approach is to keep things simple, take advantage of volunteer seedlings, take the long approach to compost and not plant too much of any one thing. The garden is very people oriented, with benches, accessible paths, close to a water source and visible right outside the kitchen window. This garden is family-friendly and a great example of what a garden for a busy family looks like.

Walk to second location: 606 S Water St. Crawfordsville, IN 47933

Amanda Ingram and Mark Elrod have transformed their side yard and an empty lot into vegetable gardens that feed the family (and some lucky friends!) throughout the year. Their main goals are to grow food inexpensively and to build and maintain healthy soil, so they grow a wide variety of fruit and vegetable crops, all from seed, and they have recently shifted to no-till gardening. During the garden walk, you can see how they make use of free local resources for mulch (to reduce the time they spend on the most odious garden chores: weeding and watering) and how they use a low-maintenance composting method to return nutrients to the soil. They also employ a variety of food preservation methods and will be happy to talk about ways to preserve the summer bounty for use throughout the year.

Walk to Third Location: Right Next Door!

Joyce Burnette grows a few vegetables in a garden seamlessly integrated into her ornamental plantings that is big enough to produce more tomatoes than she can eat fresh, but still small enough that she has time to tend it. Tomatoes are a priority because grocery store tomatoes are not the same, but she also grows peppers, lettuce, green beans, and raspberries.

Closing

Feel free to drive or bike from spot to spot if you have limited mobility or to join in at any point on the route. Looking forward to seeing you there!