Garden Club of Shawnee: June Tour Highlights the Best of Spring in Kansas
After a four-year hiatus, the Garden Club of Shawnee will be hosting its popular biennial Garden Sampler Tour. This year’s tour features gardens exhibiting creative ideas for extended outdoor family living areas, child-friendly play areas in whimsical themes and gardens specializing in organic gardening and native plants. Whether you are interested in flowers or veggies and herbs, sun gardens to shade gardens, wooded gardens to small-space gardens, you will see it all!
Three of the gardens feature lovely water elements, including ponds, bubbling streams and waterfalls. Some of the ponds are home to koi, shubunkins and goldfish, and all are beautifully landscaped with a variety of plantings, including calla lilies, cannas, papyrus, taro and elephant ears, to name a few. Additionally, two of the gardens display the result of 30 years of experimentation and learning what grows best in our Kansas rock-filled, heavy clay soil. Here visitors will find yards transformed by native flowers, grasses and other lower-maintenance perennials that attract birds, butterflies, bees and other pollinators.
To round out the tour, the Thowe garden reveals that you don’t need a huge yard to make a big impact! To make the most out of every inch of their property, the Thowes have extended their small home to include a beautiful outdoor living space. The Thowes host frequent outdoor parties, and guests enjoy a fire pit surrounded by a variety of low-maintenance perennials and potted plants for additional color and flair. It is also a must see!
Across the five gardens, visitors will enjoy seeing a variety of plantings suited for sunny beds and shaded beds, semi-sun and semi-shade areas, woodland gardens and water gardens, big spaces and not -so-big-spaces. One of the gardens even features a banana grove! And new this year, the Geib garden will share the works of a local artist who shares her enthusiasm for nature through watercolor, oil and pencil creations of sunsets, cloudscapes, birds and other creatures.
Unfolding Petal by Petal, Leaf by Leaf
– S.C.Woolsey
TOUR DATE
• June 10, 2023
• 9am-5pm Rain or Shine
TOUR TICKETS
• $15 each
• Includes map and directions to 5 featured gardens.
• Visitors accompanied by a ticket holder may purchase a ticket at
any of the gardens.
ADVANCE TICKET PURCHASES AVAILABLE
• Family Tree Nurserys, Shawnee and Overland Park
• Wild Birds Unlimited, Shawnee and Olathe
• Earl May Garden Center, Shawnee
• Online availability Eventbrite @thegardenclubofshawnee
RAFFLE TICKETS
• $2 ea or 3 for $5 cash
• Sold at each garden for great prizes donated by local merchants
and artists in support of the Club’s Grant program for not-forprofit
organizations focused on gardening projects.
