Tickets now are available for the Munroe-Meyer Guild’s 54th Annual Garden Walk, to be held this year on June 11.
Five gardens – in the Candlewood, Pinetree, Rockbrook, Westridge and Loveland neighborhoods – will be open to the public for the event, which supports innovative programming and research at UNMC’s Munroe-Meyer Institute.
“This year’s gardens are exciting,” said Guild President Luann Rabe. “Each is very different, so there are lot of good ideas that people can take away from the tours.”
Rabe’s own garden is featured in this year’s walk – the first time she has opened it for the event. She admitted to feeling nervous.
“It’s been strange, because as we’re planning the event, my family and I always have been available to help out wherever,” she said. “This year, if we need traffic directed or some last-minute errand handled, someone else will have to do it.”
There will be approximately a dozen vendors at the event, including JD of JD’s Metal Art, whose garden artwork was very popular at last year’s event.
One of the gardens is St. Leo’s Pollinator Teaching Garden, and the Knights of Columbus will have a hamburger stand on the site.
The Munroe-Meyer Guild has a history of using its fundraising to provide seed grant funding for successful MMI programs. Guild grants have provided the first funding for such MMI programs as GoBabyGo! Nebraska, the Opportunity Brew Coffee Cart and the virtual reality Hand-Arm Bimanual Intensive Therapy (HABIT) Camp.
“We look for innovative, new ideas that can impact the population we serve,” she said. “We also want something that is sustainable after we fund it. We like to bring ideas to life and see them then blossom on their on – to use a gardening term.”
Tickets — $25 in advance and $30 on the day of the event – can be purchased at Hy-Vee Stores, Benson Plant Rescue, Canoyer Garden Center, Indian Creek Nursery, Moore’s Nursery, Mulhall’s Nursery, Inc. and Westlake Ace Hardware at 40th Street and West Center Road. Tickets can be purchased on the day of the event at the gardens.