Gardens
While most of our property is wild, there are a few cultivated gardens.
Most obvious, perhaps because it is at our main entrance, is the Education Garden.
This garden was made possible in part by donations from the Peterson family in honor of Helen Peterson and in memory of Naomi Foster. Volunteers work tirelessly to make this garden a showpiece for the Center, filling it with native plants, labeling each specimen, and keeping the weeds at bay. A stone walkway allows students to get close to the plants, and to see some of the natural occurrences: this garden has been home to duck eggs, turtle hatchlings, baby bunnies, and chipmunks to name a few.
In the “front yard” is our most formal garden – an herb and butterfly garden named in honor of one of our early founders, Bob Hallquist. Bob’s Garden contains a variety of plants, many of which are very fragrant. School groups that visit on field trips are challeged to smell the leaves in an effort to find the “toothpaste plant,” the “pizza plant,” and the “make-your-cat-crazy” plant.
Our newest effort is a garden named in memory of a very dedicated volunteer who was tragically killed in a bicycle accident. The Ferd Stenta Memorial Garden is a work in progress in the center of the circular driveway. The intent is to create a woodland wildflower garden. Volunteers have been working hard to create just the right amount shade, to minimize the poison ivy, and to transplant lots of beautiful flowers that you might see in a woodland in spring and summer.
To read a Saturday article about the plants in our gardens, click here.
