In other parts of the country, if a city has a garden walk at all, it probably includes just a few gardens.
It’s so different here in Western New York!
With the addition of new garden walks in Grand Island and Springville, there are 18 garden walks this year. Several garden walks have both daytime tours and nighttime tours. And we have the largest garden walk in the entire nation, Garden Walk Buffalo, with about 400 gardens open to the public for two days.
Plus there are Open Gardens and other activities associated with Gardens Buffalo Niagara, formerly the National Garden Festival (and briefly known as Garden Walk Buffalo Niagara).
It takes a lot of work to keep these events coordinated and to let the public know about everything that is going on, especially as the number of events grows.
You can help by becoming a volunteer. Volunteers are needed right now and throughout the year in these capacities:
- Coordinator of tables at community events
- Grant writer
- Database management
- Social media marketing
- Website content writing
- Coordinator and graphic designer for printed materials, mobile app design, etc.
Volunteers are also needed to staff the Garden Walk Buffalo headquarters during the walk from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, July 30 and 31. Volunteers provide guidance to visitors about gardens to visit, sell merchandise and answer questions about the walk and amenities in the Buffalo area. Volunteers will be given this year’s T-shirt as a thank you for volunteering. (The group that runs Garden Walk Buffalo plays a vital role in organizing the many events; see more about that here.)
Hope this is the last name for Gardens Buffalo Niagara. Can’t keep up. I did like National Garden Festival though. It gave the summer event a rather important and HUGE presence. By all accounts, there is nothing like it anywhere else in the US.