This year’s Amherst Garden Walk offers more gardens to see—the Village of Williamsville will also be included. The walk will take place from 10 am to 4 pm on Saturday and Sunday, July 6 and 7. You can get maps at these garden centers: Lincoln Park, Hi Way, Spoths, Arbordale, Badding Bros, Lavocats, Spoths Market, Mischler’s Florist and Greenhouses and George’s. They can also be picked up at 111 Campus Drive West. You can also download maps at the Town…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko How many times have you looked at a landscape on Garden Walk Buffalo and thought, “Oh, my yard doesn’t look anything like this!” Well, their yards didn’t start out like that, either. See photos—before and after—of some of the most visited landscapes on Garden Walk Buffalo. You’ll find the photos and more in Garden Walk at 30, a commemorative magazine to celebrate the event’s three decades of changing the world through gardening. You can buy Garden…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko “Come to the party! Life is a feast,” said an enthusiastic Jack Edson, expressing his outlook on his gardens and his life. I visited his landscape last year on the Buzz Around Hamburg Garden Walk. He touched on many topics, including nature, art and philosophy. As he discussed the mulberry trees in his yard, Edson noted that they have a painterly quality. He pointed out the light and dark of the mulberry leaves, and compared that…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko The landscape of Mary Lou Szalach and Kevin Papendick is beautiful, with garden islands in the front yard, but it was the backyard that I wanted to see. That’s where they have raised beds that are self-watering; the beds are connected to their sprinkler system. I visited them last year on the North Tonawanda Garden Walk. Papendick displayed a diagram that laid out the set-up; see above. I colored it in to make it easier to…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko When Carol and Rick Stumpf bought an empty lot for their home 30 years ago, ash trees were already established. A house and gardens followed and the Stumpfs enjoyed their landscape. “It was all shaded back here,” Carol said. “I had all my beds how I wanted them.” She gazed longingly around her huge backyard, remembering how it used to be before her mature ash trees–and many others across Western New York– were killed by emerald…...
What looks like a huge, lush garden is really extreme container gardening. “Everything is in pots,” said Scott Dunlap. His husband, Joe Hopkins, does the gardening and together they share their Buffalo Cottage District landscape on Open Gardens and Garden Walk Buffalo. You can get a glimpse of their gardens in this video, created by Jay Jinge Hu, who also shares his Williamsville landscape on Open Gardens. Other interesting tidbits from Hopkins and Dunlap’s landscape: See more videos here…....
by Connie Oswald Stofko Majestic trees rise high above the huge backyard of Kim and Seth Kaiser. “I retired a couple years ago,” Kim said, “but when I was working, this was my respite.” The size of the backyard itself, 200 feet deep, is remarkable. “Who would ever think this is back here?” a visitor wondered. Kim replied: “It’s a surprise!” When the Kaisers moved into their East Aurora home 33 years ago, “There were no flowers here,” Kim said…....
by Connie Oswald Stofko Are you ready to see colorful flowers, unique garden art and an overall beautiful landscape? In this video, Jay Jinge Hu, who shares his own landscape on Open Gardens, takes us on a tour of the gardens of Mitch Flynn and Ellen Goldstein, who will again this year share their landscape on Open Gardens and Garden Walk Buffalo. Whatever you enjoy about a garden, you can probably find in these gardens. There’s the sculpture Flynn made…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko As 2023 comes to a close, it’s time to take a look at the year in gardening in Western New York. Let’s start with events. There were classes, workshops, exhibits, plant exchanges, sales and garden club meetings—all helpful and fun. (All the garden club meetings on my Events page are open to the public.) Then there were the garden walks and Open Gardens. More than 400 gardens were open for you to visit—for free! Garden Walk…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko As you walk along the driveway to the backyard, you make your first encounter with sharp angles. The vegetable beds are rectangles. Another bed is a triangle. Plant supports are triangles. “We have some circles and arcs to make the rectangular shapes more interesting,” said Paul Orrange. He and his wife Susan Orrange shared their Whiting Street landscape on the North Tonawanda Garden Walk in July. The Orranges have been in their home for about 25…...
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