What you will find on Johnson County's Open Garden Weekend
Project GREEN is inviting everyone to its next Open Garden Weekend.
It’s a great way to celebrate summer. Thirty gardens will be on display in the cool of the evening July 9 from 4-8 p.m. On July 10, the gardens will be open again from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
There is no fee for this tour as several businesses have sponsored the event. You can get a map of the gardens from one of the sponsors. The sponsors are listed at the end of this column.
Vintage Cooperative of Coralville will have its raised-bed gardens on the tour again this year. Just off Camp Cardinal Road on Kennedy Parkway, Vintage has 24 gardens to show you, each about 3-by-8 feet. The gardens are grouped in fours with a generous walkway between them. Surprisingly, one can grow a great deal in a small space.
Tomato plants abound in the Vintage beds, along with cucumbers, onions, garlic, peppers, squash, lettuce, radishes and flowers. The clematis is just about gone except for the Sweet Autumn, which is getting a bit aggressive but will redeem itself in late August with the start of its pure white blooms.
There are lilies, petunias, marigolds, daisies, mums, salvia, pretty blue bachelor buttons, plus herbs such as Rosemary and basil and a whole stretch of the tall fern-like dill that has escaped from its own garden to settle in a couple of others.
If you love trees, you will find a variety at Vintage. Often dedicated to someone, all have grown nicely in the five years since these condos were built. Many have fencing around them to keep the deer from feasting.
Trees include oak, birch, ginkgo, serviceberry, maple, yews and junipers. Two bioswales on the property are filled with shrubs, plants and bushes. Surrounding the complex are more shrubs and bushes, and if you look at the decks on the units you will see colorful potted plants peeking through the rails.
The gardens are small, but the plants are growing well in the hot summer weather and the variety of plants in each of the 24 gardens represents the likes of the people who love to garden but do not want to care for a large one.
About a mile south of Vintage is St. Andrew Presbyterian Church. The garden there is unique, not just for the enormous amount of produce, but the many different ways the church grows its plants.
Clyde Seery and several other members of the church have used many innovative ways of growing plants and saving water. This year they planted tomatoes, using the fence as support.
They used bales of straw in part of the garden and planted vegetables in the bales. Drip lines are used to water the plants, saving the evaporation when watering overhead and saving weeding time.
“Lettuce Feed Others” is the motto on the garden sign, and indeed they do. This year they have already given a thousand pounds to the food pantries in Iowa City, Coralville and North Liberty. Much more is expected.
The garden was enlarged this year. Besides what is growing on the fence, you'll find spinach, chard, cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini, okra, turnips, onions, and the list goes on. Cutting flowers is a popular item.
St. Andrew is pleased with the success of the garden as well as its salsa sale in the fall. The church uses what it calls the “uglies” from the garden, and others donate to make and bottle the salsa.
It is a popular item that in turn helps to purchase seeds and plants for next year. Later in the summer, closer to harvest time, I will do another column on this prolific garden.
Coralville Central Grade School has maintained huge gardens for decades. The Parent-Teacher Organization started this and continues to work with the children, with some help from the Trail Trekkers program, Miriam Timmer-Hackert tells me.
She also says, ”The students love finding strawberries and serviceberries to eat on the playground. We are working on planting more edibles mixed with the perennials and more native plants.”
This must be an exciting project for the children. Usually working in the dirt is fun for most, but then seeing sprouts peeking through the ground has to be exciting.
Right now they are looking for bee balm and raspberries, if anyone would like to contribute. Plants already growing well and can be shared in return are jasmine, yucca, asters, daisies, brown-eyed Susan and coneflowers.
This garden and plantings show a love of plants, the excitement of seeing their seeds turn into pretty flowers, and eating some produce along the way.
Note: Garden maps will be available beginning the week before the event at: Coralville City Hall, Forever Green Inc., Green State Credit Union, Hills Bank, Iowa City Landscaping, Sanders Creek Co. Nursery and Landscaping, Think Iowa City (Area Convention & Visitors Bureau) and Urban Acres Real Estate.
This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: What you will find on Johnson County's Open Garden Weekend
