Residents of Phelps Grove will be busy this spring, restoring garden beds at Phelps Grove Park and getting ready for an Art in the Garden tour 1-4 p.m. on Sunday, June 1.
The Phelps neighborhood is defined by tree-shaded streets lined with Craftsman style, bungalow and four-square homes whose residents tend to beautiful gardens.
During the Art in the Garden tour, local artists display and sell their work in numerous front- or back-yards gardens or even on front porches, and visitors are invited to tour the gardens and enjoy the art and live music, which will be performed in some of the gardens.
Tickets of $15 each can be purchased at the corner of Kings and Bennet. Maps of garden locations and descriptions of art being displayed will be given to those who buy tickets.
Since the tour will be on Sunday afternoon, people participating in the tour can visit the gardens in any order they wish and park their cars in any part of the neighborhood.
We especially hope that all participants in the tour will stop at the location closest to the place where we will sell tickets: the gardens on the east side of Phelps Grove Park.
In February of 2024, Phelps Neighborhood Association members began work at their neighborhood park, clearing 80-year-old garden beds of weeds, tree sprouts and Bermuda grass. By fall, seven beds had been cleared and planted with flowers providing beauty for people and support for bees, birds and butterflies.
In January, those volunteers started work on the four south beds, which, before a disease killed the plants, had been filled with beautiful blooming roses.
Though restoring these gardens is a process that will not be completed by June 1, flowers planted last year should be blooming in the north beds, and newly planted perennials should be growing in the south beds.
Wander through the gardens and celebrate with us the rebirth of gardens in one of the loveliest parks in the city.
