Right away the Children’s Garden and Education Center fulfill their purpose and small events are held there

Alice in Wonderland Tea Party

Country Garden Brunch

Education remains part of our mission and now we don’t have to hold our classes at the college

Fairy Gardens

Mud n’ Muck

Who wouldn’t want to do this one?

Trash to Treasures

We can have the Volunteer Breakfast in the Ed Center instead of the barn

I don’t know what this was, but the shirts all say hope on them, whatever it was, it appears that everyone is having a good time.

The Fall Harvest Festival remains our biggest event

In the original master plan was a provision for what was called a temporary parking lot. This was designated that way as the welcome center was temporary as well in anticipation of eventually building an event center.

Up to now, we have been parking up on Tower Hill, but this year we are ready for a real parking lot which will be down in front of the head house. This is what it took to accomplish this project:

Once this road is completed, we no longer need a parking area up by the tower. That means we can level off that space and pretty it up a bit.

Now that we have a parking lot down the hill, the entrance will be from there so we install a new Kiosk that welcomes you to the gardens

The old stock fence gate is finally gone

According to the newsletter dated, November 2003 we had a great opportunity to replace that old stock fence.

The image is a little faded but it says:

The Arboretum main entrance; now located off Orange Road; is remodeled with $30,000 raised by a committee chaired by Jan Guthrie. A new gate is put in place with funds donated by Bill and Harriet Rickert. This gate is designed by Harriet’s son Brian Barnes a landscape architect in Chicago.

The following is an excerpt taken from an article written by Craig Gibleon:

“Leonard Truax donated much of his time to create the fieldstone pillars, using his exceptional masonry skills taught to him by his father, Harold. The road is newly graded with a fresh limestone surface.”

Once again, I am struck by how people from all over come together to make wonderful things happen at the Arboretum. Here is the process of going from a stock gate to an eye-catching entrance.

This year we created a new garden called the Fern Gully.

There was a garden in the Master Plan, Phase 1-B, called the Fern Grotto. This is part of the description for it “The fern grottos along the Mississippi palisades in northeastern Iowa provide the inspiration for this garden. …….”

 The red dot on the image below shows the location of this garden from the Master Plan

I am not sure if we were using this as a model, but, according to our site files, a new garden was created this year that we called the fern gully.

Here is a quote from that file:

 “Fern Gully” was constructed with ferns, pieces of wood, and small dogwood trees. Initial funding for the project came from a memorial gift in honor of Maurine Crisp’s mother. Arches with shade cloth were installed to shade the garden.”

This space would change and evolve over the next several years. At one time it was common during and after heavy rains for this gully to have flowing water in it.

Let’s just take a look around and see how we look this year

The engine that makes us go will always be our volunteers like

Jan Guthrie and Nancy Puetz

Kelly Conrad

Pam Flanders

And all the rest

Let’s all keep moving forward!