Garden Walk
This is where I begin my relentless shilling for a local garden event I am very invested in: Garden Walk Buffalo. It’s July 30-31 and involves a free, self-guided tour of over 215 private gardens on Buffalo’s West Side. I have a link to it over there.
We had a “rally” for it last Sunday. I’m using quotes inappropriately because it’s not really a rally as I think of rallies, with people exhorting other people to start something or stop something or support something. The Garden Walk rally is actually a very gentle event—well, it’s held at a church—where the gardeners who are opening their properties for the Walk gather, have some wine and snacks, pick up some posters and maps, and generally hang out for about three hours. I’m in charge of the refreshments and I usually do a great job on the wine and not so much on the food. There wasn’t enough again this year. My bad.
Sooo hot though—many people just wanted sparkling water, of which we had an ample supply. My friend Cheryl helped me (more on her in another post) and we had a delightful time schmoozing with our fellow garden peeps. This is the kind of group I enjoy. I know I should be out there doing more about the truly parlous state of Buffalo and Erie County, and I really admire my fellow activists and blogger-activists who are working on this. I did some of that over the past few years—particularly as regards historic preservation issues—but now find it difficult to be politically involved.
However, we have found that neighborhoods on the Garden Walk actually experience rises in housing values, productive occupancy of long-vacated buildings, and general improvement in quality-of-life factors after they have become involved on the Walk. For example, a former rooming house on my street, empty for at least ten years, was purchased by a couple who fell in love with our block after Garden Walk.
This is good.
We had a “rally” for it last Sunday. I’m using quotes inappropriately because it’s not really a rally as I think of rallies, with people exhorting other people to start something or stop something or support something. The Garden Walk rally is actually a very gentle event—well, it’s held at a church—where the gardeners who are opening their properties for the Walk gather, have some wine and snacks, pick up some posters and maps, and generally hang out for about three hours. I’m in charge of the refreshments and I usually do a great job on the wine and not so much on the food. There wasn’t enough again this year. My bad.
Sooo hot though—many people just wanted sparkling water, of which we had an ample supply. My friend Cheryl helped me (more on her in another post) and we had a delightful time schmoozing with our fellow garden peeps. This is the kind of group I enjoy. I know I should be out there doing more about the truly parlous state of Buffalo and Erie County, and I really admire my fellow activists and blogger-activists who are working on this. I did some of that over the past few years—particularly as regards historic preservation issues—but now find it difficult to be politically involved.
However, we have found that neighborhoods on the Garden Walk actually experience rises in housing values, productive occupancy of long-vacated buildings, and general improvement in quality-of-life factors after they have become involved on the Walk. For example, a former rooming house on my street, empty for at least ten years, was purchased by a couple who fell in love with our block after Garden Walk.
This is good.
Comments
garden owners leave a lot
to be desired...i.e. treating
visitors like stups & delighting
in questions like "what's that
blue thing?" - when I answered first "Oh that's Ageratum Blue Horizon" the garden owner was
stunned saying "How did you know
that?"...give me a break...we're
not all rubes.