Updated June 22nd, 2022
Summer in Your MetroParks’ Gardens
Heads up! This article was last updated 2 years ago.
It has been a hot, steamy June so far, but the gardens in your MetroParks are growing strong. Like many of you we’ve been enjoying the lush foliage and abundance of blooms that are the result of the recent rains. It’s been especially nice to seek out cooler feeling spaces. Whether in the shade garden or out in a sunnier border white flowers seem to brighten the space, but also cool down the feeling of the garden. Throughout Cox Arboretum, Riverscape and Wegerzyn Gardens MetroParks hydrangeas are stealing the show with their strong presence and large floral umbels of pure whites, creams and barely-there-pinks. Bottlebrush buckeye, astilbe and hosta provide a spikier sense of cool wherever they are planted. In sunnier spots, yucca, roses, oxalis, pentas and cosmos add interest among other colorful plants. White can even be found in the vegetable garden as cilantro planted in spring bolts and flowers and the chamomile comes into bloom.
Speaking of vegetable gardens, MetroParks staff and volunteers have been busy getting the heirloom garden at Carriage Hill MetroPark Historical Farm. Thursdays are a popular day for gardening and early this month the team planted Cherokee Purple tomatoes, Vermont Cranberry bush beans and Kentucky Wonder pole beans, all plants that would have been commonly grown in our part of Ohio in the 1880s. At the Possum Creek MetroPark Demonstration Garden spring lettuce and other greens are giving a last flush of leaves before the heat and the beans, squash and other vegetables are growing strong. Staff and volunteers at the park continue to renovate the garden adding new raised beds and squeezing in some late season planting.
So, visit your MetroParks for a grand start to summer, for gardens filled with beautiful flowers and produce, for time among the wonderful old trees, for the wonderful sounds of rivers and streams along your walk. Summer is finally here.
