It’s hard to beat the region’s beauty when the vivid washes of spring blooms roll into the lush greenness of summer.
Stunning flora and more long have been highlighted at the Southwestern Indiana Master Gardener Association’s biennial Garden Walk, which takes visitors inside some of the most breathtaking gardens in and near Evansville. This year’s event, June 21-22, features nine residential gardens in addition to five public spaces. From native species and flowering perennials to hundreds of houseplants, “We have quite a variety of gardens on the walk this year,” Garden Walk co-organizer Susan Cooper says.
Linda Voglund’s garden is planted on land that used to be Clearcrest Pines Golf Course near Darmstadt, Indiana. She and husband Dan built their home in 2019, and she has filled the surrounding property with flora like salvia, mint, hardy geraniums, shrub roses, peonies, camassia, lilies, and penstemon. “I have a flower and plant addiction!” Linda laughs. “I love little showy evergreens.”
She also mixes in native species, a direct result of having worked 20 years with the Indiana Conservation Partnership. “I am very careful about not using invasive plant species that can escape my land and degrade the quality of forest, agricultural, and grassland habitat,” she says.
Another Darmstadt property on the Garden Walk is the home of Mike and Kay Haller, whose home garden took root half a century ago. “When we moved here in December 1975, I’d already transplanted and taken cuttings of roses and had them planted all the way up the drive,” Kay says. “It started 50 years ago and has just increased!”
Kay cares for a whopping 450 houseplants, including mother-in-law’s tongue, hoya, spider, jade, and tropicals; the eldest is a 1960 cactus from a family trip to California. She hangs her houseplants outside; about 250 move inside in winter, while the rest ride out the colder months in her greenhouse. Kay credits her house- plants for her and her husband’s improved health. “Since we’ve had them, we’ve never been sick. I’ve not had a cold since 2013,” she says. “I just love plants. They put out so much good oxygen.”
Larry Miller earned his gardening merit badge as a Boy Scout and has never looked back. A founding member of the local Azalea Society of America, he has planted traditional and encore azaleas, as well as deciduous orange natives at his Riverside Historic District home. Garden Walk guests to his flower garden will spot knockout roses, zinnias, hydrangeas, hostas, and some native species, such as Joe Pye weed and milkweed. Catmint, alyssum, and irises line the sidewalks, and large fig trees have grown from sprigs that were transported from Germany.
New to this year’s Garden Walk are four community gardens: In addition to SWIMGA’s Master Gardener Display Garden, tour guests can visit the community gardens at Wesselman Woods Nature Preserve, Evansville Water & Sewer Utility’s Sunrise Pump Station along the Pigeon Creek Greenway Passage near Downtown, family-run Hart- man Arboretum on the North Side, and the Three Sisters Garden at Angel Mounds State Historic Site near Newburgh, Indiana.
