Quilt garden honors Nappanee heritage
Jun. 25—NAPPANEE — Elkhart County's Quilt Gardens thrive on volunteer support to encourage tourism.
"I can't even tell you how many hours it takes to keep the weeds out," said co-chair Sandy Witt.
Witt joined the Quilt Gardens volunteer team in 2011 after it moved to the Nappanee Center. She passed by as they were planting and knew she wanted to be a part of it. A servant at heart, Witt is a paramedic for the city of Nappanee and co-chair of the Nappanee-based garden.
"I just thought it looked like a lot of fun, and they were having a blast while they were planting it," she said. "I have no gardening experience. I have terrible-looking weeds in my backyard yard, but here it's different."
Co-chair of the Nappanee Quilt Garden Committee along with Martha Owen, who is also director of the Evelyn Lehman Culp Heritage Collection at Nappanee Center, the duo researches flowers and plants to determine what will best create the design for their location. Some years they create their own design. This year there are around 6,000 plants in Nappanee's Quilt Garden alone.
The Nappanee Center's Quilt Garden this year is titled "Tracking Our Beginning."
Witt explained that the arrival of the train service to "Napanee" is what led to the surge in business and residents that created the vibrant community of Nappanee today. The spelling of the city's name also changed over time.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the founding of Nappanee in 1874, so the team decided to go with an abstract railroad track theme. They incorporated navy blue and white flowers to honor the historic Nappanee High School Bulldogs.
"We pulled the blue and white in, and then the green for the countryside, and the yellow represents the light from the train that comes through," Witt said.
It's comprised of Superhero yellow marigold, Madness Midnight petunia, Clear Crystal white alyssum, and silver dichondra, and is supported financially by the Elkhart County Visitors and Convention Bureau. The visitors center supports quilt gardens and quilt murals across the county as just one avenue of encouraging tourism to the area and honoring the region's Amish and quilting heritage.
"There's a lot of people that this is such a different culture for them, and we're so used to it around here that it's nothing for us," Witt said. "I love that we can meet people from all over the country and they're so in awe of the gardens and how pretty they are. It's really neat to touch base with people from all over the place and tell them a little bit about Nappanee."
"It's neat for them, especially quilters and people that like to garden," she said.
The team at the Nappanee Center also tries to bring their gardens to life, incorporating structures into the garden scene. One year they used buggy wheels, they've planted vegetables for the community to take, hosted a scarecrow, and last year the community painted birdhouses.
This year, the library is hosting a craft where kids can paint a train.
"Especially in the past couple of years, we've been trying a lot to do more community engagement," Owen said.
The Nappanee Center also boasts a small quilt replica wall hanging of every garden produced, by designer and author Connie Kauffman.
Witt is utterly invested, even going so far as to engage her home in support of the garden.
"We had parsley for a few years, so we've had caterpillars in our garden; and they had found a bunch of caterpillars in the garden and thrown them in the trash, and I was horrified," she recalled. "I came back after everybody left and took them all home and I raised them and released them. ... My husband and I built a nursery and we put it in the side garden and we would just pick the caterpillars when they were super tiny and we would pick parsley and put them in little vases and let them grow and then we'd release the caterpillars when they turned into butterflies."
They've also found a bunny nest, and visitors contributing silly mementos to the spot. It used to be a geocaching site, too.
"Life happens in the garden," Witt said. "It takes a whole bunch of people to make this happen and we appreciate every single one."
At the site, there is also a garden mural. "Grandmother's Flower Garden" pays homage to contributions of the John Hartman family whose 1888 homestead on West Market Street is now a living history element of the Evelyn Lehman Culp Heritage Collection.
Use the Quilt Gardens Passport to explore all the gardens and hand-painted murals and win a prize at the visitor's center at https://www.visitelkhartcounty.com/things-to-do/attractions/quilt-gardens.
There are 13 gardens to check out this year, and even more murals.
The Elkhart County Visitor's Bureau & Convention Center encourages visitors to share their experiences using the #QuiltGardens hashtag on Instagram and Facebook.
Dani Messick is the education and entertainment reporter for The Goshen News. She can be reached at [email protected] or at 574-538-2065.