2023 Nappanee IN Quilt Garden and Quilt

Every year I help plant the Nappanee IN Quilt Garden and I make a quilt to match the garden.  The garden quilts then hang in the visitor center that is just behind the garden.  Here is this years Garden - called Home Sweet Home.  The design is of a bird house.  This photo is when the flowers have just been planted, so you don't see much color yet.

The Nappanee Indiana Quilt Garden is part of the Quilts Along the Heritage Trail garden tour which is a great tourist attraction and wonderful for everyone to take part in.  It takes a full day or two to visit all 15 gardens.  The gardens are all free and located in 6 towns in the area.  Of course you also have to stop and eat at some great local restaurants along the way!

Here are is a close up of some of the flowers.  It is fun to watch the garden grow and see how the plants fill out and fill all the spaces.

My quilt always has the center square as a replica of the garden design.  Then I add a border of some kind around the center square.  This year I thought I would put birds in all the blocks of the border.  After designing about 12 different birds I decided that wasn't what I wanted to do!  Back to the drawing board.  I decided to make a variety of bird houses and decorated them in different colors and fabrics.

What I didn't know at the time was that they were going to have a contest for different age groups to decorate bird houses to go along with the garden!  What a great surprise!  They hung the pretty bird houses in side beds beside the quilt garden.  That was just perfect!

Aren't they cute!

Here are a couple photos of planting the quilt garden.  You can see here how the design is staked out for the various plants.  I'm in the upper left of the photo in a blue t shirt.  We had a great day to plant.  It started out cool, but warmed up and wasn't to hot.  My sister Karen was visiting and was able to help with planting the garden this year!

Most of the flowers planted in this photo.  The brown dirt rows will be covered with black much later.

After a very busy, tiring day- it was time for a break with a couple of the garden committee members- Karen Clipp and Julie Dijkstra and me in the blue t shirt.

I'm not sure which committee person took the three photos above.  Thanks to whoever it was!

If you are ever in the area, please stop and see our wonderful gardens!