The Quilt Gardens are known for lovely flowers, peaceful surroundings and vibrant downtowns. But there’s more to every story at each Quilt Garden site. Here are some of our favorite examples:
Garden for a cause
One Quilt Garden packs a powerful message within its brilliant blooms. Each year, Linton’s Enchanted Garden incorporates the new breast cancer awareness pattern of the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer Research into its garden. This year, the garden, Butterfly Symphony, pairs with the Butterfly Flutter pattern.
Welcome to the newbie
Sure, each year the quilt patterns change and the Quilt Gardens are totally different, but there’s even more going on at the Elkhart County Courthouse Quilt Garden this year. This garden, named “The Wild Blue Yonder,” features a flower never used in the Quilt Gardens. And it’s glorious, too, to see the silver foliage of Silver Bullet Artemisia. It really sets off the red flowers, doesn’t it?
Historical effect
The Quilt Garden at Ruthmere is literally in the shadow of Elkhart’s history. And it is for that reason why the garden bed is not angled for easier viewing, as it is with most of the other Quilt Gardens. Rules regulating historic sites means that garden may only appear as it might have back in the day, meaning no slope on the garden bed.
The originals
The Quilt Gardens started with two test gardens. While Das Dutchman Essenhaus in Middlebury has remained every year, we’re overjoyed that the other site, Southgate Crossing, is coming back this year.
Makes scents
The Quilt Garden at Wellfield Botanic Gardens is beautiful to behold, to be sure, but it is also lovely to smell. Corsican mint is used to form the triangles in each corner of this garden. You might just smell this Quilt Garden before you ever lay eyes on it!
Painted beauty
Each Quilt Garden site has some freedom to add features, and this one is a masterstroke. The Krider World’s Fair Garden Quilt Garden includes a hand-painted mural by local artist Linda Pieri. Even better, the mural depicts the Festival Rose, a thornless rose developed by the Krider Family Nurseries at the very site of this park.