I took my three younger kids to the Thanksgiving Point Tulip Festival yesterday. What a beautiful treat on a beautiful day! I’ve attended once before, when I was a volunteer, working on my Master Gardener certification. If you haven’t been, you should give a try next year. But you might want to try a day other than the last day of the festival! It was pretty darn crowded, with a line far out the front door and plenty of crowds once we got in. Still, it’s something like 50 acres, so there’s plenty of room to spread out.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

One of my favorite areas is their Secret Garden, with old fashioned wooden doors into an outdoor room of vined walls, fountains, trees, and flowers. It’s pretty darn cool. My girls liked the Italian garden the best – the one with the long stairs in the pic above. My son was mostly happy that there was a bouncy house. :)

There are things I’d love to see the garden do. First, I think the amount of lawn is too much. some lawn is great to tie things together, but especially as Utah faces more and more demands on a limited water supply, I think huge expanses of lawn appear gluttonous. I don’t say that to insult the people behind the gardens, because I really like them. Karen Ashton, the founder of the gardens, was in my Master Gardener course, and I really like her. My friend Mike is the CEO of the whole operation. They’re fantastic people who want to serve the community with a place of beauty. OK, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way… they need to reduce the enormous, thirsty, bluegrass lawn! :)

I’d love to see some parts of the garden devoted to teaching the public, not just when you come for a class in the building, but by examples out in the gardens. There could be gardens set up to show great examples of different styles of gardening, from cottage gardens to water-wise Southwest style to how to make a vegetable garden beautiful. Speaking of water-wise gardening, they should specifically have some areas designed to show how beautiful a garden can be on low water use. The Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District does a phenomenal job with that at its Conservation Garden Park in West Jordan.

Anyway, it was a great day at the gardens. Too bad it was cold and stormy last weekend when Santia was in town, because she missed it this week. That’s one of the bummers about being in a commuter marriage — we can’t get to all the events we want to in either state. She would have really enjoyed this!