Garden Walk flaunts floral skills

Gardeners and enthusiasts from across Bloomington visited private and public gardens Saturday and Sunday to discuss landscape architecture and planting soils during the 21st Annual Summer Garden Walk.

The Bloomington Garden Club started the local event with the intent of raising money for youth gardening, and the club still maintains this objective by donating the proceeds to the Hilltop Gardens Summer Junior Master Gardener Program.  

Florence Nebergall, a longtime Garden Club member, has participated in all but one of the 21 garden walks and used to visit local schools to help register kids for youth gardening. Though the walk is meant to promote youth gardening, she said it has also affects other residents.

“It has helped to beautify Bloomington and has encouraged people to take care of their gardens,” Nevergall said.

Greg Speichert, director of the Hilltop Garden and Nature Center, works hard to have the gardens at Hilltop prepared by the time of the walk. Speichert said Hilltop has participated in the walk since 2007 and offers people a variety of elements to admire.

As visitors walk around, they encounter a butterfly ranch, an herb garden with chives, rosemary, thyme and lavender, and community garden plots used by local residents. There is also a half-scale replica of a modernist garden done by Roberto Burle Marx in Rio de Janeiro.

Speichert said it is his goal to add new, creative elements to the gardens each year to view on the walk.

“We get better every year,” Speichert said.

This year Hilltop Gardens also featured a flower show by the women in the Bloomington Garden Club. Several members participated by making a flower arrangement coinciding with this year’s theme of “old containers.” Each arrangement was placed in a reusable container with the goal of focusing on sustainability and showing people that anything can be reused. 

The other stops on the walk took people all over town, reaching as far east as Hilltop Gardens and as far south as Hyde Park. 

Complete with a gazebo, pond and waterfall, Terry and Phyllis Clapacs’ garden was one of the six private gardens that earned its place in this year’s walk. When they bought their house at Hyde Park nearly 17 years ago, the Clapacs had a standard yard characteristic of an American subdivision. Since then, they have added a variety of plants, trees and other elements to their garden to enhance its appeal.
This is the second time in the last 10 years that their garden has been a stop on the walk.

“There’s a lot of preparation,” Phyllis Clapacs said. “We’ve come a long way.”

According to Speichert, people whose gardens are featured on the walk are giving a great deal to Hilltop’s youth program even though they are not compensated for participation.

“The reward for the participants is knowing that they’re helping Hilltop,” Speichert said.