Our days are heating up with a fair amount of humidity. Today we drove to some of the Elkhart County quilt gardens. Sonya Nash who works for the Convention and Visitors Bureau spoke at the Winona Literary Club; she told us how the bureau provides the plants/flowers to the sites once they have decided which pattern they will be displaying. Through several years of experience she now knows how to calculate the exact amount for each pattern. This year there are 17 sites with quilt gardens using almost 1 million blooms. We visited 6 quilt gardens today.
I think the "quilt" at Wellfield Botanic Gardens had the lushest flowers and because they provided an elevated platform it provided the best photo opportunity.
Along with the flowers, this year sculptures by Seward Johnson are part of the displays. The city of Warsaw, Indiana had some of his sculptures several years ago.
We started at the Elkhart County Courthouse in Goshen.
The "quilt" was named Joseph's Coat.
We drive by this courthouse fairly often when visiting Goshen.
Our second stop was completely new to us: Elkhart Environmental Center. Apparently, this site is used to teach school classes and I guess other groups about conservation, etc.
The Seward Johnson figure even has a band aid on his arm.
We walked a short trail through the wetlands. Every so often I would hear a non-human noise in the brush (besides the birds) or hear a plop as something went into the water. I did end up with two mosquito bites. If we were to return I would wear repellant.
The parking lot had wildflowers/native vegetation.
Not far from Wellfield gardens is Ruthmere built in 1908.
The mansion has tours but was closed on Mondays. I took a photo of a garden plot near the open back gate where a man was mowing, but I don't think it was the official quilt garden.
Our last stop was Linton's Enchanted Gardens a retail store and plant store. We had been here several years back, and there was a quilt garden at that time though that was not why we visited. This year's "quilt" was Kaleidoscope Blooms.
Here we encountered Marilyn Monroe.
We bought two small tables for our front porch. The existing one had mosaic tiles and was crumbling apart.
These are made to look like mosaics but are not individual tiles, just glass with a grid overlaid.
I had originally thought we might go to Das Essenhaus in Middlebury to see the quilt garden and to eat lunch. My husband reminded me to check hours/days open last night as he thought it was closed on Mondays. Yes, it is. So we had a sandwich at Linton's and then headed for home.
We have been wanting to go to Nappanee to see some new stores; we will probably do that when it is cooler. Nappanee also has a quilt garden.
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