Celebrations in the Garden
The gardens have hosted both memorable events and ordinary day-to-day pleasures. In 2006, our son Steve married Lorraine on a September Labor Day weekend in the garden.
Our six grandkids have made tremendous use of the yard and gardens. Here in 2014, they play softball, climb in the tree fort, and race around paths in the community area.
We hosted a P.E.O. summer fundraising dinner for women's scholarships in July of 2014. For an extra 25 cents, our guests could stick their hands in the compost pile to feel the heat.
We celebrated Ken’s retirement with colleagues and former graduate students in the garden in August of 2014. Here’s to my professor emeritus!
We have welcomed several organizations to the garden for events including members of the Helen Allen Textile Collection, friends of the Madison Symphony, and the Wisconsin Hearty Plant Society.
In July of 2021, the garden was selected for the Olbrich Home Garden Tour and brought 1,680 visitors in the two-day event. It netted a record $27,500 to support the daily operations of the Olbrich Gardens in Madison.
Ken had manicured the gardens for the 2021 Olbrich Tour to within inches of their lives. Visitors walked the paths, lingered on benches, and asked questions of six docents with plant expertise during two days of nearly perfect weather.
The lawn took a beating from foot traffic, but it was spared the worst because of the interior paths through all of the gardens. The lawn had recovered fully by the end of July.