by Kim Halyak
The Cooper-Young Garden Club hopes you had a chance to take part in our annual community building and beautification event, the Cooper-Young Garden Walk, May 19-20, either as garden hosts or visitors. It was the perfect event to meet new neighbors and reconnect with familiar ones while peeking into hidden, beautiful, quirky gardens.
The garden club puts on this annual fundraising event to showcase all the eclectic garden and green spaces in our neighborhood. Our goal is to celebrate everyone’s hard work while inspiring visitors to see their outdoor space with new eyes. Ultimately, we hope to spread the message across Memphis that beautiful spaces enhance daily living, reduce crime and blight, raise property values, build community pride, and bring in tourists and dollars. This is doable and essential and doesn’t require government resources to make it happen. A win-win for everyone.
Yearly, our garden walk committee looks for creative ways to enhance our garden walk and this year we really outdid ourselves.
We kicked off our event with a first-time pre-garden walk reception at Stone Soup Café and invited all our garden hosts, sponsors, and press to come and meet each other. Delicious food and drink, courtesy of Stone Soup and garden club members was served. As part of their event packets, garden hosts received name badges, the garden walk sign, and FAQ packets. Big thanks to Susan Wallace for the farmer’s market coupons, and to Greg Touliatos and John Jennings from Urban Earth for the $25 gift certificate.
Our fabulous sponsors received complementary garden walk tickets, and the press received a professionally prepared press packet, garden badge, and a beautifully designed calendar by Jenean Morrison. Thanks Cathy Winterburn and Jenean.
This year’s garden walk had the theme “Cooper Young Goes Native,” and we invited all our homeowners to add native plants to their gardens. Receiving three garden grants totaling $1,550 allowed us to create nine educational native plant demo gardens to show what native plants fit specific places. Since native plants are new to most gardeners, club member Mila Borden created educational signs suggesting better plant choices in place of commonly used “invasives.” And club member Marie Dennan worked with the Peabody Elementary School Garden Club to create pollinator posters and bug hotels. Thanks to Steve Rogers and Cooper-Young resident Michael Freedman for installing the large educational bug hotel in front of Peabody School.
Dr. Doug Tallamy and Chris Cosby gave powerful presentations on why we must plant natives in our urban landscapes. If everyone in Cooper-Young adds native trees, shrubs, and perennial plants to our green spaces, then we will help ensure that our birds, insects, and wildlife continue to live and thrive, which means we will, too.
If you missed the presentations you can listen to Dr. Tallamy here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMxq76yv5w0
You can find Chris Cosby’s native plant list here: http://www.cooperyounggardenclub.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/A-Sampler-of-Native-Plants-for-the-Mid-South-by-Site-Conditions.pdf
The garden walk showcased 89 gardens, business spaces, and community spaces. Of these, 62 were returning hosts, which just proves how rewarding it can be to get your garden ready for visitors. There were 23 new gardens and three new business spaces; thank you newcomers for taking the plunge. We added a new block, Fleece, with Jackie Courtney’s flower CSA. Additionally, four new neighbors have expressed an interest in being on the walk next year. Wouldn’t it be gorgeous if we could have at least eight gardens on each block? Can you imagine the impact on our streets’ appearance?
Our Visitors numbered 350-400, down from last year but we were competing with several events. On the other hand, we had visitors from both Jacksons (Tennessee and Mississippi), Tupelo, Vicksburg, Mobile, Jonesboro, Little Rock, Minnesota, Dallas, California, and Ithaca, NY. Pretty amazing for only our third year. After expenses we expect to have over $10,000 for future beautification projects, although some will be held in reserve for next year’s garden walk. So even with our smaller attendance, our higher ticket prices increased our final profits!
We added four new educational booths and one new vendor. Thank you Bluff City Bakery and Buff City Soap for providing vendor space. We added a shuttle bus for both days and extended our garden walk hours. We know many visitors took advantage of our amazing shops and restaurants both days. Early-bird-ticket basket donors were very generous; we gave away two baskets valued at over $450. Thank you to all the businesses that participated. We also had four raffle items thanks to Dr. Tower, Michael Penn, Wallflower Memphis, and Ken Lecco. The raised bed won by Ginny Barnett and Mandy Craig of 2097 Nelson is now sporting a stylish purple paint job. These women prove that renters are just as committed to beauty as owners. Thank you
What’s next and how can you help?
The garden club will vote on which beautification projects to fund. Join the club and get involved.
Volunteer to be on the 2019 garden walk board committee. We need your expertise and creativity to grow and build a world class event.
Go outside and look at your space. Does it make you smile? Does it add to the neighborhood’s character and beauty? Walk our beautiful neighborhood, visit the gardens on the tour, and start turning your space into an oasis. Your effort will amplify and multiply our neighborhood’s beauty.
Sign up to be on next year’s walk. Then let your creativity shine.
Remember to thank all our garden walk sponsors, donors, garden hosts, volunteers, and committee members for their hard work and time given to this project.
The Cooper Young Garden Club meets the third Wednesday of every Month at the Cooper-Young Community Association office at 2298 Young Avenue. We start with potluck meal and wine at 6 p.m., then have a scheduled speaker or topic, and end with a short business meeting. Membership is open to anyone interested in gardening — men and women, young or seasoned, Cooper-Young resident or not. Come enjoy our laid-back meetings, fun members, quirky gardens, and civic minded bent. For more information visit cooperyounggardenclub.org. We hope to see you there.
