Tuesday Tour: the final garden

Sunset was nearing. Our hotel awaited us on our trip homeward. But we were determined to arrive at our last visit of the day.

The last beautiful quilt-pattern designed flower garden awaited us on our driving tour of Elkhart County’s Quilt Gardens on the Heritage Trail in Indiana.

This final garden winds up not only our 2023 summer road trip west but also this series of Tuesday Tour posts showcasing the quilt gardens we viewed.

We arrived at The Farmhouse Inn Bed and Breakfast at 1061 Parkwood Drive in Nappanee, Indiana to view the Grist Mill Garden.

With Super Olympia White Green Leaf Begonias; Easy Wave Yellow Petunias; Compact Electric Orange Sunpatiens; and Snaptastic Orange Flame Snapdragons all planted in a large garden plot in front of a red barn, it didn’t disappoint.

The historic Farmhouse Inn was first constructed by an Amish farmer from Ohio in 1840 long before the town of Nappanee was established in 1874. Christian Stahly constructed the house and barn for his family and also built a home for his son.

The original farmhouse underwent restoration over the decades and became a bed and breakfast inn in the 1990’s. The historical significance of the barn on the property is that Amish families in the area once attended church there.

Today, this rooster keeps watch over the site while visitors stay in the B&B which consists of eight themed bedrooms.  

This summer, a new quilt garden entitled Indian Sunburst can be seen at the inn.

The 2024 all-new quilt gardens throughout Elkhart County were planted the end of May and can be seen all summer. To see design patterns for the 2024 quilt gardens, click here.

If you’re interested in visiting the gardens, click here for the 2024 driving tour map.

On a whim, we discovered the lovely quilt gardens when we exited the highway in search of a place to eat lunch in Elkhart, Indiana. How glad we were to have taken that little detour off the beaten path on our way home.

The driving tour produced an enjoyable and pleasant summer excursion through a county we’d never visited before. Someday perhaps we’ll return to investigate the area more thoroughly.

Until then, we have fond memories. And more road trips to pursue.

“Look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.”  ~ Tom Stoppard

©mamasemptynest.wordpress.com 2024

Tuesday Tour: no place like home

Most of us of a certain age probably remember hearing an old song entitled Home Sweet Home with the lyrics, “be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”

That ballad, written for an 1823 opera by American songwriter John Howard Payne and English composer Sir Henry Bishop, became popular especially during America’s Civil War days.

I think I either learned that song when I was an elementary school student or someone in my family taught it to me ages ago. However, those lyrics came back to my mind during our 2023 summer road trip.

We were on our last leg of the Elkhart County’s Quilt Gardens on the Heritage Trail driving tour in Indiana when we entered Nappanee, a quaint small town.

With such an unusual name, I wondered if the town acquired its moniker from a Native American language and sure enough, Nappanee is thought to have been derived from the Algonquian word meaning flour.

I don’t know how much if any flour might be produced in this small town, but they certainly have beautiful flowers!

Last summer’s quilt-designed flower garden located at the Nappanee Center, 302 West Market Street, proved to be a sweet, pleasant place.

The garden itself, with the theme Home Sweet Home, was designed in the form of a house with Super Olympia Pink Green Leaf Begonias; Cocktail Vodka Red Bronze Leaf Begonias; Aloha Blue Ageratum; Dragon Black Coleus; and Aloha White Ageratum plants.

We were treated not only to a view of the quilt garden but also a 10×10 foot quilt patterned mural on an adjacent building. Appropriately named Grandmother’s Flower Garden, the mural depicted a quilt design very familiar to me.

My own mother made several quilts using that pattern, which became the most popular quilt design back in 1935.

We appreciated another aspect at Nappanee Center’s outdoor space – this Scripture written by the Apostle Paul etched in concrete at the garden.

We also couldn’t help but notice several colorful bird houses hanging nearby. They were the result of a Home Sweet Home Birdhouse Decorating Contest, sponsored in part by Friends of the Nappanee Public Library.

For those who needed a moment of rest, a park bench, flanked by potted flowers, provided a pleasant spot as shown in the beginning of my post.

As we drove through Nappanee on our way to the final quilt garden, I snapped this photo through my open car window.

We would have relished a longer stay in that lovely town, nestled among beautiful farmland and an Old Order Amish community, but needed to arrive at our last quilt garden before sunset.

As we departed, my final thought was that Nappanee would be a nice place to call home.

For those fortunate enough to live there, I bet they do appreciate their home sweet home. And they will also enjoy this summer’s quilt-themed garden, Tracking Our Beginnings, which was recently planted.

“Home is the nicest word there is.” ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

©mamasemptynest.wordpress.com 2024

Tuesday Tour: not stuck in the mud

I grew up in a rural area outside of a small town. For those who like the fast pace of city life, that probably sounds dull. Some folks may even equate small towns with being stuck in a place you can’t wait to leave behind.

But I love little towns. I find them interesting, friendly, and usually quaint and unique. I thought the same thing when Papa and I drove through Wakarusa, Indiana last summer on our road trip back home from South Dakota.

We were on our last leg of a driving tour to view quilt-motif designed flower gardens on Elkhart County’s Quilt Gardens on the Heritage Trail. We found the Roman Cross themed garden in a lovely spot at 116 S. Elkhart Street in downtown Wakarusa, a small town with a population of around 1,700.

The Roman Cross garden was planted with Victoria Blue Salvia, Red Hot Salvia, Dust Dusty Miller, Super Olympia White Green Leaf Begonia, Taishan Orange Marigold, and Super Olympia Red Green Leaf Begonia.

It was just lovely situated in front of a nicely painted Quilt Gardens sign.

A park bench with potted flowers was also in the area, and painted on the adjacent building’s wall was a permanent quilt-designed mural entitled Clara’s Flower Garden.

After viewing the garden, we enjoyed driving through Wakarusa on our way to the next quilt garden.

Of course, I needed to find out more about this nice little town after we returned home. What I found makes me want to return to that area some day in the future and take time to check out the offerings this community has.

Two festivals are held each year in Wakarusa – a Maple Syrup Festival in April, where fest goers can indulge in Amish-produced maple syrup, and a Bluegrass Festival in June.

Other attractions bring folks to Wakarusa the rest of the year. Unique shops like the Wakarusa Dime Store, which is an old-fashioned candy shop, and Wakarusa Pro Hardware Store, along with locally owned restaurants, entice visitors.

Shoppers at the Dime Store can find all sorts of candy (450 different kinds!) but its claim to fame is their jumbo jellybeans, which were created there in 1969. Each year this candy shop sells more than 75 TONS of jellybeans! If interested, you can check the store out online here.

Wakarusa Pro Hardware’s home is an original 1904 building with hardwood floors and pressed tin ceilings. See it here. What will amaze shoppers is a floor-to-ceiling wall which harbors more than a thousand wooden drawers full of hardware needs.

But there’s even more to find in this small town.

The Wakarusa Historical Museum, a complex composed of nine buildings and two railroad cars, sounds like an interesting and educational place to learn more about the town’s history.

Visitors can schedule tours through the town’s chamber of commerce and check out the historical buildings which include a one-room schoolhouse, blacksmith shop, railroad depot, and others.  

In addition to the annual quilt garden- this year’s theme is Full Blown Tulip Garden – visitors can enjoy a Memorial Park Butterfly Garden too.

A stop in this little historic town, which was called Salem in the mid-1800’s but underwent a name change to Wakarusa in 1859, provides so many enjoyable aspects.

If you’re wondering what its name means, all I could glean off internet sources was that Wakarusa may have been derived from a Native American language and meant “knee deep in mud.”

We certainly didn’t see any mud nor were we stuck in the mud when we traveled through this cute little town. But I bet it’s a great place to get “stuck” and discover its charm.

“Small towns are like hidden gems waiting to be discovered.” ~ unknown

©mamasemptynest.wordpress.com 2024

Tuesday Tour: hopeful garden

We were hopeful, that’s certain.

The day was slipping away while we were on our driving tour of Elkhart County, Indiana’s Quilt Gardens on the Heritage Trail last summer (2023), but we were hopeful that we’d manage to view them all before the sun set.

With four more gardens to visit, we located Linton’s Enchanted Gardens’ Wings of Hope quilt-designed plot of flowers located at 315 C.R. 17 in Elkhart.

A wooden bridge structure enabling viewers to overlook and/or photograph the garden proved to be a nice feature we found and took advantage of at this huge garden center.

Linton’s Enchanted Gardens partners with the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer and features Vera Bradley products, made in Indiana, in their retail store. Each year, the garden center incorporates a Breast Cancer Awareness pattern into their quilt garden theme.

The Wings of Hope garden featured Sun Storm Purple Vinca, Sun Storm Bright Red Vinca, Diana Loving White Dianthus, and Jamie Yellow Marigolds but wasn’t yet at its full maturity.

However,  it was large with six plots of flowers. I didn’t have a wide-angle lens to capture the garden in its entirety, so the collage below taken with three different shots of the flowers had to suffice.

The garden’s size fit right in with Linton’s, which is Indiana’s largest home and garden center.  We didn’t take time to check out the rest of the center which features several family-themed activities as well as the retail gardening shop and nursery.

Not only can customers find all their plants, trees, and shrub needs in the nursery which also offers unusual and rare plants, but gardening supplies of all kinds including those for water gardens, interior and outdoor décor, and landscaping items and design help are available.

So why is Linton’s called the “enchanted gardens?” Because not only was the quilt designed garden on display on the north side of the main building, but families can enjoy train rides, pedal go-karts, hand-pedaled trains, gemstone mining, family quad cycle riding, paddleboats, a shooting gallery game, and climb into water orbs to float on a pond, all for a fee. Free opportunities include visiting the petting zoo, playing on a treehouse, and feeding Japanese Koi fish for a few cents worth of food.

And if you get hungry yourself, you can stop into the Garden Café for lunch. The menu offers various sandwiches, salads, beverages, and snacks. According to the center’s website, birthday parties, weddings, and other events can be booked at Linton’s Enchanted Gardens as well.

It seemed like a place full of hope for an entertaining time along with a chance to bring some plants home in hopes of a bountiful and beautiful result.  

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” ~ Audrey Hepburn

©mamasemptynest.wordpress.com 2024

Tuesday Tour: starry nights and tulips

One of the rewarding aspects of living in the country is stepping outside on a clear, dark night and gazing upwards.

If you’re distanced far enough away from man-made lights, you can observe numerous stars twinkling in the night sky. Or even, during a very rare occurrence like recently, the Northern Lights/Aurora Borealis!

Such a view always proves awe-inspiring to me. Perhaps a starry night also inspires quilters as there is a star pattern that’s relatively easy to piece together, although I am not a quilter so I wouldn’t know that first-hand.

When we were on our way back home last summer (2023) from our road trip to South Dakota, we took a little detour into Elkhart County, Indiana for the Quilt Gardens Along the Heritage Trail driving tour.

Not only are quilt designs produced in flower gardens throughout the county every year, but quilt-patterned murals are permanently attached at various buildings as well.

One of those we viewed was the Starry Night mural we found at the Elkhart Civic Theatre, 210 E. Vistula Street in Bristol, Indiana.

The patchwork quilt design is based on the star quilt pattern and was chosen by the Bristol on the River Committee, part of the town’s Main Street Organization.

After seeing the mural, we traveled along Vistula Street to find the next quilt garden with the theme Tulip Garden. With the garden in full bloom even that early in the summer, it was a sight worth seeing.

This garden was on the grounds of the Elkhart County Historical Museum at 304 W. Vistula Street, Bristol. The museum, which holds over 30,000 local historical artifacts, opened in 1968 in what once was the Bristol School, originally constructed in 1903.

The museum is free to visitors with donations gladly accepted and is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. It was closed when we arrived, but we were there for a glimpse at the beautiful garden.

The white background of the quilt pattern was formed by Dreams White Petunias and Super Olympia Rose Green Leaf Begonias represented the dark pink of the tulip while the light pink pattern was Cocktail Brandy Pink Bronze Leaf Begonias.

The 2024 quilt garden theme to be featured this summer at the museum is Burst of Joy.

We did not tip toe through the “tulips” at this garden, but we did enjoy the tulip pattern. However, we didn’t stay long because we still had four more quilt gardens in the county to locate before the stars came out.

But starry nights and tulips were a nice reminder of our own country home.

“Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. President from 1901-1909

©mamasemptynest.wordpress.com 2024

Tuesday Tour: food, quilts, and sunshine

I’m really not a ‘foodie’ but instead refer to myself as one of those people who eat to live rather than live to eat.

However, I do truly appreciate good old homestyle cooking – the kind of food I was raised on provided by my mother. She was a very good cook and baker but never made gourmet meals.

Two months ago, my husband and I (we two empty nesters) took a weekend trip to the state next door to visit our son and his family and meet our brand-new grandchild.

On the way, we ventured via a scenic route through a part of that state where a concentration of Amish and Mennonites families live. Papa wanted to visit a spacious garden center there to search for a particular kind of seeds and an inoculant for his gardening experiment.

We also stopped for lunch in the vicinity at a large restaurant offering a sumptuous all-you-can-eat buffet meal with homestyle food provided by Amish and Mennonites cooks and waitstaff.  

Afterwards, we browsed the gift shop and attached bakery where yes, even after a very full stomach, we succumbed to purchasing some yummy baked goods. Honestly, we did buy them to share with all our family for the weekend!

The restaurant reminded me of Das Dutchman Essenhaus Inn and Conference Center at 240 US Route 20 in Middlebury, Indiana, which was one of the sites we visited on our driving tour of Elkhart County’s Quilt Gardens Along the Heritage Trail last summer.

After a bit of internet research, I discovered the restaurant we dined at on our recent road trip belongs to a restaurant chain that includes Das Dutchman Essenhaus Inn.

When we arrived that warm summer day in 2023 at Das Dutchman Essenhaus, the first thing we spied wasn’t the quilt garden but a quilt-designed mural.

Double Wedding Ring, the quilt pattern, was very familiar. My good cook mother was also an amazing quilt maker, and she made Double Wedding Ring quilts for several people.

After viewing the mural, we discovered that Das Dutchman Essenhaus is a large complex with not just an inn and conference center but also boasts Indiana’s largest family-style restaurant.  A bakery and various Essenhaus Village Shops including a quilt shop are located on the premises too.

In keeping with the Amish and Mennonite faith, everything is also closed on Sundays.

Das Dutchman Essenhaus first opened as an Amish-style restaurant in 1971 and has expanded into a very busy place. Visitors can take carriage rides, rent bicycles and either ride or walk along the nearby Pumpkinvine Nature Trail.

We didn’t arrive there to take part in any of those activities though. We were in search of the quilt garden, which we easily located in an expansive green space.

The quilt pattern, Solar Wheel, was vibrant in color. The orange sun was depicted with Antigua Orange Marigolds and its yellow rays with Zahara Yellow Zinnias.  Green Leaf White Begonias formed the white pattern; Dwarf Red Salvias were the red design; and Denim Shock Wave Petunias flourished as the bluish-purple border.  

We enjoyed a short walk to the garden in the sunshine of a pleasant summer day and noticed a picturesque white gazebo on the grounds which begged me to take its photo.

But due to an abundance of visitors at the complex and our need to complete our driving tour with seven more gardens to find before sunset, we didn’t stay long.

This year (2024), Das Dutchman Essenhaus’ quilt garden theme is Blazing Star Garden. I’m sure it will be just as spectacular as last year’s.

“Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” ~ Hans Christian Anderson

©mamasemptynest.wordpress.com 2024

Tuesday Tour: who’s holding court?

I’ve heard of a kangaroo court but never a canine court. But that’s the thought I had when we visited one site on our driving tour of the Quilt Gardens Along the Heritage Trail in Elkhart County, Indiana last June (2023).

Today’s Tuesday Tour details our fourth stop on the quilt garden tour in the city square of downtown Goshen, Indiana where the Elkhart County Courthouse is located.

Back in 1831, the town of Goshen became the Elkhart County Seat. The historic three-story red brick courthouse that exists today was originally built during the years 1868 through 1870 and renovated in the first few years of the last century (1905-08).

The courthouse is quite nice and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. But what really caught my eye, as we strolled on the sidewalk to view the quilt garden planted on the courthouse lawn, was a fountain.

Not just any fountain, this one boasted a gleaming copper-painted statue of Neptune (or was it Poseidon?) right in the middle. I’ll have to admit that whoever he was, he kind of stole the show away from Buster’s Garden, the quilt-designed garden we came to see.

And for the life of us, we couldn’t figure out what a statue of the Roman god Neptune (or Greek god Poseidon) had to do with Goshen, Indiana. A little research on my part answered the question when I found an article written by Elkhart County Historical Museum’s education curator Patrick McGuire.  

McGuire stated an immigrant from Greece named James Polezos came to America and settled in Goshen in the early 1900’s. Polezos sold candy and ice cream in his confectionary store across from the courthouse.

Because his business prospered, the businessman wanted to contribute a worthwhile project to the town and requested a fountain be placed on the courthouse’s east lawn.

When his request was granted, Polezos paid $1000 for the statue of Neptune which was made from zinc and fashioned after a French artist’s 1856 sculpture.

So there Neptune, well over 100 years old, still sits in the middle of that fountain. And across the street, a confectionary store, now named differently and owned by others, exists yet.

But even though ol’ Neptune garnered my attention, we came to see Buster’s Garden which was patterned as a dog’s face (Buster, I presume).

Since the quilt gardens are planted at the end of May and we visited in mid-June, the plants and flowers in this garden weren’t at full maturity yet.

However, we still could view the quilt pattern: green plants for the background; white for two bones on either side of Buster; black for the dog’s head and ears; blue for his eyes, cream for his face, and pink for his nose.

The plants and flowers used were: Emerald Green Dichondra (green); Super Olympia White Green Leaf Begonia (white); Black Dragon Coleus (black); Aloha Blue Ageratum (blue); Cocktail Whiskey White Bronze Leaf Begonia (cream), and Super Olympia Pink Green Leaf Begonia pink).

This year’s (2024) quilt garden theme at the Elkhart County Courthouse, 101 N. Main Street, will be “Many Beautiful Parts.”

The quilt garden proved worth seeing and of course, we never would have been astonished to find Neptune had we not stopped at the county courthouse.

The question is just who was holding court in Goshen…Neptune or Buster? I just hope Buster didn’t grow large enough to leave his garden and bite Neptune’s toes. 😉

“A house without a dog is like a garden without flowers.” ~ unknown

©mamasemptynest.wordpress.com 2024