Garden walkers enjoy Elkhorn botanical displays

Garry and Nardya Floyd of Bellevue visit the F. Hitchcock Memorial Prayer Garden at St. Augustine of Canterbury Episcopal Church in Elkhorn during the 40th Annuall Munroe-Meyer Institute Garden Walk.

Attending the annual Munroe-Meyer Institute Garden Walk has become a yearly tradition for Garry and Nardya Floyd.

“We don’t miss this,” Nardya Floyd said. “We pack a lunch and spend the day at the gardens.”

The couple was particularly impressed by what they saw Sunday during the 40th version of the garden walk, which supports MMI’s therapeutic, training and research activities benefiting children, youth and adults with developmental disabilities and chronic handicapping conditions.

Munroe-Meyer Institute board member Nancy Metzler with her tiger lilly-Harley Davidson boot flower display at the MMI Garden Walk on Sunday.

With gardens ranging from formal to folksy, a route that included most gardens being situated in close proximity and a sunny day made for a wonderful day outside, the Floyds said.

“We’ve thought about trying to do a garden walk in our own development and we definitely took something away from what we saw today,” Garry Floyd said.

The walk — which ran from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday and featured five gardens in Elkhorn and one in Bennington — also was a pleasant experience for first-time attendees, such as Christa Divis and Lisa Hollingsworth of Omaha.

Divis and Hollingsworth hit all six gardens on Sunday and said they particularly enjoyed hearing the garden owners and handlers discuss the various plants and flowers on display.

“Overall it was a really nice experience,” Divis said while enjoying an ice cream cone at the Garden Faire at Skyline Corrall in Elkhorn.

Many attendees said they particularly enjoyed having many of the gardens in close proximity to each other, garden walk chairwoman Ann Hosford said. Plans are to do the same thing in another area of town for next year’s walk, she said.

These floral interpretations of sushi rolls created by the Nebraska Florists Association were on display Sunday at MMI’s Garden Walk.

Although attendance numbers and proceed totals are not yet available, the more localized garden route, a sunny day and a roster of quality vendors at the Garden Faire led to a strong turn out, Hosford said.

“The gracious homeowners who displayed their gardens and quality vendors we had at the garden faire all did well in attracting regular attendees as well as a large group of new attendees,” Hosford said. “Overall, I think everything went very well.”