Author: Jim Charlier
It’s America’s largest garden tour this weekend and it’s all free! Come on out this weekend and see 406 of the most creative gardens you may ever see – anywhere.
It’s a garden tour – but also allows its 60,000+ visitors to appreciate and enjoy Buffalo’s spectacular residential architecture, walkable neighborhoods and friendly, gracious gardeners.
Nearly all gardens are the creative work of its homeowner. You’ll find water features, vegetable gardens, and great garden art made from repurposed items, architectural salvage, found items, and much more. The back of the Garden Walk map has a list of gardens by water features, rock gardens, structures, art, native-planted, organic, Asian-style and more. You can even see what gardens are easily wheelchair- and stroller-friendly.
In the world of Garden Tours events there is Garden Walk Buffalo and all the others. There is no garden event that combines community engagement, economic benefit to the community, leveraging of a wide range of local related arts and culture and garden tourism beauty and spectacle. The result is perhaps the largest community garden tourism event in the world with over 400 gardens for over 60,000 visitors from around the world. The fact that this model has been copied but never surpassed is testament to its success and quality and yet year in/year out never ceases to grow, change and build upon its success and reputation. Today it ranks as one of the iconic garden tourism events on a par with the Chelsea Flower show, the Philadelphia Flower show, Keukenhof Gardens, and Floriade in Australia – lofty company indeed.
– Richard Benfield, New Britain, CT; author of the book, Garden Tourism
If you’re able, try and visit the areas of the Walk where you may NOT see the most concentrated areas of gardens – there are great gardens all over – like on Prospect Avenue, Johnson Park, and Putnam, Dewitt, Ketcham, Fargo, Fifteenth, Mariner, Rhode Island, York, and Cary streets, and many more.
All you have to do is pick up a free map at one of our two headquarter locations (Richmond Summer Senior Center, and Buffalo Sem on Bidwell Parkway) and start touring gardens. The tour is self-guided – no tickets or registration required.
Garden Walk Buffalo will also have five FREE Hop-on, Hop-off shuttles running continuously from 10 a.m to 4.p.m. both Saturday and Sunday. On one of the buses, a docent from Explore Buffalo will be speaking and pointing out historical sites and significant architecture a,ing the shuttle route. That bus will be clearly marked. The shuttles can be picked up at either headquarters or at marked bus stops around the Garden Walk footprint. Route and shuttle stops are marked on the Garden Walk Map.
When it comes to Tourism, gardens are un-exploited assets in most communities. Tourism organizations have yet to acknowledge that ‘garden visit’ is one of the top ten activities of tourists. I always point to the City of Buffalo as a destination that has transformed back, front and side yard gardens into tourist attractions with Garden Walk Buffalo. Your approach is a great example for those promoting the development of Garden Tourism.Garden Walk Buffalo is also proof that you do not have to have a Longwood Gardens as an attraction in your community, to be a Garden Tourism Destination.
– Michel Gauthier, Ottawa, Canada; Manager, North American Garden Tourism Conference and Canada’s Garden Route
It is all free – but it is thanks to our sponsors and to donors like you! Please visit our two headquarters and make a donation – or help by purchasing a baseball cap, toe bag, t-shirt, pillow, magazine, flag, magnets and more. All proceeds – from merchandise or donations – go toward keeping the Walk free as well as the Marvin Lunenfeld Beautification Grants given to block clubs and community groups within the footprint of the Walk for projects like hanging baskets, stressed planters, garden restoration, and more. Garden Walk has granted nearly $100,000 since 2005 for more than 90 projects. We need your help to do even more. For more on grants, visit gardenwalkbuffalo.com
As an appetizer, this Thursday and Friday are the last two days of Gardens Buffalo Niagara’s Tours of Open Gardens. You can visit 75+ gardens – throughout Western New York – for select hours on Thursdays and Fridays throughout July. To visit gardens from Lockport to Eden, start by visiting gardenwalkbuffalo.com. Here you’ll find where to purchase our Tours Open Gardens And Garden Events Guide, ($5), or download the addresses, days and times each garden is open.
Also, visit www.GardensBuffaloNiagara.com to find out more about the Buffalo Beyond Flowers and East Side Momentum tours. These are great tours that will open your eyes and minds to great creative garden and sustainability projects going on all over the city.
Garden Walk Buffalo is an all-volunteer committee of Gardens Buffalo Niagara. In its 22nd year, Garden Walk Buffalo has an estimated $4.5 million economic impact. 23% of visitors come from more than 50 miles away from Buffalo. Gardens Buffalo Niagara is a 505(c)3 non-profit, all volunteer, organization making Buffalo Niagara a premier garden tours destination. For more information, visit www.GardensBuffaloNiagara.com.