This year, there will be seven wonderful gardens on the Garden Walk.
Garden #1 Hilltop Gardens at Indiana University
Visit this year’s fabulous flower show, Many Happy Returns presented by members of The Bloomington Garden Club, featuring arrangements that employ recycled materials and vintage containers. Hilltop’s gardens highlight recycling and sustainability through the use of recycled materials. Get ready for an imaginative display of repurposed and rescued surplus—and even art through compost. Tour the children’s gardens of the Youth Garden Program, supported by The Bloomington Garden Club’s annual Garden Walk.
Garden #2
Visitors are greeted with daylilies along the drive and a curbside garden area with roses and perennials. The back garden showcases beds of unusual annuals and perennials as well as vegetables and herbs. This all-seasons sun and shade garden, affectionately known as “Nanny’s Garden” and dedicated to the owner’s grandchildren, invites visitors to stroll leisurely and be surprised.
Garden #3
Cheerful annuals interspersed with perennials welcome guests. Trees, including kousa dogwoods, gingkos, Japanese maples, mature oaks, and sugar maples, contribute to the park-like atmosphere. In the back garden, a gazebo overlooks a pond fed by a waterfall and a large hosta garden that solves a drainage problem.
Garden #4
The tree-lined drive leads to an almost four acre garden filled with roses, ferns, annuals, perennials, mature trees, two water features, and an inviting swimming pool. The owners have enhanced the existing garden with objects from
their travels.
Garden #5
This Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired home features a Japanese garden designed and maintained by the owners. A walk through the entry of the home leads to the courtyard and into the garden. The rock-covered paths are flanked by conifers, hostas, and Japanese maples, as well as creative rock sculptures and carvings crafted by the owner.
Garden #6
Shade plants welcome visitors when entering this colorful container garden that leads to a back deck and patio overlooking Lake Monroe. The hillside garden, with paths lined with annuals amid large mature shade trees, was professionally designed and is filled with a variety of perennials. This garden showcases strategies for small spaces.
Stop #7 Monroe County History Center
202 E. Sixth St., corner of Sixth & Washington Streets
Museum admission is free with Garden Walk ticket. Come see the Bloomington in Bloom’s photographic exhibit, the Master Gardeners exhibit in the Community Voices Gallery, and The History of Oliver Winery exhibit. Enjoy refreshments (with air conditioning). Bring gardening questions and receive answers from Master Gardeners.