If you’ve been feeling cooped up inside lately, the Friends of the Museum have a fun opportunity for you to get out, enjoy nature and help support programming at the museum all in one package.
The Friends are holding a Garden Tour on Saturday, July 4 from 10:00 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. that will pair up participants and local gardeners in order to raise money to support all of the programs the Museum holds each year, including SnOasis and craft workshops.
“The garden tour is being put on by the Friends of the Museum as a fundraiser for the museum to help us run the programs that we run,” said Friends of the Museum member Caren Fagerdahl.
“Our workshops have been very well attended and we have people asking for more, so we need to raise more money to be able to put on more workshops. And that in itself is pretty exciting, that the workshops have taken off that well.”
The plan for the tour is to have participants purchase a passport that will let them in to six local gardens to see what those with green thumbs have been up to this year, both to appreciate the effort and results, or even to crib a few ideas.
“Gardeners really like to get ideas from other gardeners, and most gardeners like to share their ideas,” Fagerdahl said.
“There’s such an art to gardening that it’s wonderful to be able to share and learn from one another.”
The plans for the garden tour have been in the works since before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Fagerdahl said she got the idea for the tour from a friend in Duluth, where it is a popular event, and while there was initially some thought to cancelling it outright due to the virus, some more recent changes in the restrictions in place led to a rethinking of the plan, rather than abandonment.
“Our plan originally was to just put it out there and let people sort of be self-guided, but because of COVID we’ve had to restrict how we’re doing it,” Fagerdahl explained.
“So therefore we have a schedule that people will have to follow. They’ll buy a passport –they’re available at Lowey’s– and the passport that they purchased will have a number and that will tell them what their rotation will be, and they have 45 minutes, including travel time, for each garden.”
Fagerdahl also stressed that safety and security for everyone involved is top of mind for when the day of the tour arrives, with volunteers from the Friends group being posted at each stop to ensure that people are wearing masks and using hand sanitizer, which will be provided. Each stop is also being limited to five people in the garden at any time in order to keep to social distancing requirements.
Fagerdahl said that she was initially concerned gardeners wouldn’t want to participate even with the restrictions in place, no matter that they’ve begun to be eased up, but she found them still enthusiastic about the idea.
“When COVID started to open up a little bit, I contacted all of the gardeners thinking that some might not want to,” she said.
“But because of the measures we’re taking and the fact that we will have a volunteer there to help them ensure that people are following the rules, everybody was quite willing. I think everyone’s ready to do something fun. What a great way to get out and enjoy the beauty of nature and other people, but still social distancing, still staying safe.”
There was no specific requirement for any garden to be included in the tour, meaning that each garden has the potential to appeal to a different type of gardener, whether they be more interested in flowers or a backyard vegetable patch. Fagerdahl said the reception to the garden tour on the part of those with gardens is strong enough that there are already people hoping to take part next year.
Thirty garden passports will be available for purchase at $20 per person, and Fagerdahl said that while supporting the museum is important, the tour will also provide a bit of fun following months of uncertainty.
“Supporting the museum is the main thing, but also I really think that people are ready to do something fun that is still adhering to the COVID restrictions, but they can go out and have a good time and still be safe,” she said.
Passports are available at Lowey’s Greenhouse and Market Garden until Tuesday, June 30. Participants are asked to wear their own masks and provide their own transportation.
