By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
Every other year, local garden enthusiasts get the chance to see just what other gardeners are up to.
Through the work of the Burlington Garden Club, the biennial Garden Walk will take place Sunday, July 12, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Advance tickets are $8, and can be purchased at the Burlington Garden Center, Burlington Flowers and Interiors, Richter’s Marketplace, Breezy Hill Nursery, Tattered Leaf Designs, Gooseberries, Gia Bella Flowers and Gifts or Milaeger’s in Sturtevant.
Day-of tickets will be sold for $10 at the gazebo in Wehmhoff Square Park in downtown Burlington. Cost of the ticket includes cookies and lemonade at the legacy garden next to the Burlington Historical Society.
A raffle will also be held. The raffle includes items such as a $250 Visa card, $250 gas card, garden gift baskets, and other prizes. The drawing will be held at 3:30 p.m. at the gazebo on the day of the event, and winners need not be present to win.
Co-chairwoman Ruth DeLay explained that, on the off years of the walk, members of the garden club canvass the area for gardens to feature the following year.
“Gardeners just automatically share,” DeLay said.
Added Barb Lehn, who founded the garden club in 1992, “We drive down back alleys, we look over fences – and we snoop.”
Lehn said the club does the canvass for two weeks – usually the second and third week of July – the year before the walk.
“They’re just happy to share their garden,” Lehn said. “It’s lovely. The colors are beautiful.”
Members of the club are greeters at each garden, as well as the garden owners.
This year’s list of garden is slightly shorter – just five gardens – because of the distance between them. Instead of the gardens being clumped together in Burlington, this year they are scattered from Spring Valley Road out to Highway 50.
“This year it’s more of a tour,” DeLay said.
The Historical Society will open its museum, 232 N. Perkins Boulevard, as well as the Pioneer Cabin, for the event. The two gardens tied to the buildings are also on the tour.
Artists from “The Gathering” in Burlington will be painting and showing their works during the garden walk. The group meets on Tuesday afternoons at a local church, and members display their paintings – often for sale – at local businesses.
Money earned from the garden walk goes to sponsor the yearly scholarships presented by the club.
DeLay said the walk will take place rain or shine – though rain has never been an issue.
“I don’t know if we should say that,” DeLay said. “It’s going to jinx us.”
For further information, or to purchase tickets in advance, please contact DeLay at (262) 210-3176, or visit the club’s website at burlingtonareagardenclub.com.
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