Beauty in bloom: Garden Walk features a variety of gardens

Story and Photos by Alice Gerard

Senior Contributing Writer

Fairy gardens, bees buzzing around native plants, and a she shed with a “The Wizard of Oz” theme were some of the treats greeting visitors to the 10 gardens that were open to the public during the recent Grand Island Garden Walk. Visitors found a diversity of garden experiences in the walk, from the literal “garden bed” at Adele and Dennis Upton’s garden to the historic one-room schoolhouse that has been converted into a nature center at Nicole Gerber and Dave Reilly’s Alt Homestead.

The visitors arrived in a steady stream throughout the course of the day, according to several gardeners.

Alec Humann said visitors had “lots of questions. A lot of my friends and family came from Buffalo and a lot of Grand Islanders. It’s been fun to meet a lot of different people, for sure.”

Humann described his garden as having two very different segments: “The yard’s pretty much divided in half. Up by the house are the more formal perennial beds, with lilies. It’s a little more tidy. With the back part, I let the lawn grow into what I call the meadow garden. A lot of the things that are in this garden showed up on their own: milkweed, New England aster, and things like that. I’ve also planted other things. I’ve amended the natives with things like zinnias and Siberian iris and black eyed Susans. But this is more the wild garden for pollinators. We’ve got lots of fireflies at night. So, yeah, it’s kind of the yin to the yang of the two different gardens.

“I get a lot of hummingbirds. A lot of the flowers I plant are for hummingbirds specifically. Things like the beebalm and the cardinal climber and a lot of these salvias that I plant. It’s fun. It keeps me busy, that’s for sure.”

Humann has participated in garden walks for a number of years.

“I first started Garden Walk in Buffalo in the Elmwood Village area, and I had a garden at my parents’ house,” Humann explained. “So, we were on the Garden Walk in Buffalo for years. In Grand Island, I’ve just been on it once before, in 2019. (The property has) changed a lot. There’s the fence. The house has been sided. We had to take down some trees since 2019. It’s a lot different. But yeah. It’s fun to share gardens.

“I love people coming to see what is done for the whole season.”

The Horrigans’ fairy garden.

Adele and Dennis Upton’s garden features an actual garden bed.

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Dan Beauchamp said the garden he and his wife, Pattie, tend incorporates several elements, including a fairy garden and a pond. The fairy garden is called “Roberta’s Garden.” Beauchamp said that garden was “from the lady next door, who passed away” on March 24.

Beauchamp said he really enjoys “My fish, my pond. Just keeping it all clean and taking care of it all.”

Suzanne Tomkins, a first-time participant in Garden Walk, along with John Study, said she enjoyed participating in the walk: “I would do it again. To be honest, it’s been a lot of work, but it’s usually a lot of work, right? But it’s very rewarding to have people walk through and be able to talk about it and share with me their garden stories, as well. I want to see the other gardens on the tour. I’ve been hearing about them all day.

“I learn so much from people. I was walking through the vegetable garden, and I had planted borage. The borage really attracts the pollinators, and Sonia told me you can eat the flowers. I did not know that. They are delicious.”

Tomkins explained how her native plant garden came to be: “We bought our house in fall of 2019, and there were 14 large dead ash trees, which we had to have removed. What you see here has been growing for the last four years.

“We planted what I would refer to as a living fence on the back wall to provide some privacy, sort of a border, and, because it was right at the beginning of the pandemic, we decided to put in a big vegetable garden because I was wondering what I would do with all my time.

“I would say the gardens here are 80% native plants. They’re doing very well. They’re very low maintenance, once they get established. You don’t really have to do anything. In this garden here are a lot of things from my previous yard. I had very large gardens at a previous home. I couldn’t bear to be without them, so I brought bits of them with us.”

Carol Horrigan, also a new participant in the Garden Walk, said, “It was nice. There were a ton of people who were really interested in the flowers. They loved the fairy garden. They loved ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ It was a pleasure.”

The fairy garden features a house built by Carol’s husband, Chuck Horrigan. After the house was constructed, “We cobblestoned it and, then, the roof was getting a little warped,” Carol Horrigan related. “This year, he built it up, and I put a succulent roof on. I bought two little houses that light up at night. My granddaughter will move the fairies around, and the little girl down the street comes and visits the fairies and moves them around.

“The other point of interest is my she shed, which is ‘The Wizard of Oz’ she shed. We had a big shed, but it was hard to put the garden stuff in, so we added this little she shed. It contains furniture and gardening stuff. I wanted a yellow brick road, so my husband figured out how to put a yellow brick road in there.

“I landed on the Wicked Witch of the East. Somebody brought me a tin man, the oil can. I found a windspinner of the Wicked Witch of the West. And there’s Emerald City. That was out all winter. I love it. It’s peaceful. I love the water feature.”

Ray and Deborah Billica are new participants in Garden Walk. Ray Billica said the garden includes both flowers and vegetables: “I love doing the vegetable garden. I plant the flowers, and my wife, Debbie, takes care of the flowers by watering, fertilizing, deadheading, and that’s her job.”

Billica said he enjoys relaxing in the garden, and that he likes “the serenity. It’s quiet here. You can sit out in the backyard and read a book or daydream and look out and see the fruits of your labor. It’s quiet back here normally, so it’s a great place to be in the summertime.”