Gardens & Flowers on My Mind

By Ellen Goldstein

During the fall and winter each year, I count down the days until I can begin working and taking care of my garden.

Early in January, the flower and gardening catalogues start arriving in the mail. And I make my plans for the coming season. Like many other Buffalonians, I look forward to the community garden events available throughout Western New York, and I want to share some local, magical garden opportunities with you.

Ellen’s garden on Highland

Each summer, seeing, smelling and tasting the great many blooms, bushes, fruits, vegetables and herbs growing outside my front or back door is such a glorious experience!

There are so many botanicals like sweet roses, magnificent hydrangea, heavenly-scented lilies, colorful daisies and black-eyed Susans, fragrant phlox, delightful daylilies, not to mention the delicious tomatoes, cukes, zucchini and bountiful basil for pesto I am able to grow in my little city garden. I simply find myself so thankful to God, very grateful for what I have, and entirely awe-struck by it all.

This coming week and next, as we approach the end of July, gardens all over Western New York are in bloom, and community gardens walks and tours are happening throughout Erie and Niagara Counties.

If you have never visited a garden on any of the local walks, you are really missing a beautiful experience. And even if you have gone garden hopping, there are so many more new garden places and flowery sights to see each week and weekend.

Open Gardens, presented by Gardens Buffalo Niagara, offers the chance to see more than 100 of the very best yards and gardens in Buffalo, Hamburg, Orchard Park, East Aurora, Williamsville, Amherst, Snyder, Tonawanda and Kenmore. It takes place on Thursdays and Fridays at various times through the end of July.

This weekend, the East Side Garden Walk, featuring more than 100 gardens in homes and parks located around Buffalo’s extensive East Side. To explore how community gardens can help heal and grow community a group of Buffalo religious organizations will again participating in a guided tour of a few of these East Side gardens this Sunday, July 19. You can get a map at headquarters in Martin Luther King Park (near Fillmore & North Parade) or People’s Park (at Main & Jewett Pkwy) and visit gardens on your own or visit EastSideGardenWalk.com to find out more information and print out a map.

The biggest and best-known event is Garden Walk Buffalo, America’s largest garden tour (really!!!), taking place Saturday and Sunday, July 26 & 27, 10am-4pm both days. This 31st annual awesome event includes more than 300 gardens located in Elmwood Village, Little Summer Street, the West Side, Parkside and downtown. There are maps and more information at GardenWalkBuffalo.com.

Our garden, tended by my husband Mitch Flynn and me (he creates the art and sculptures and I plant the flowers), is located in Elmwood Village.

It has been on the end-of-July Garden Walk Buffalo since 2005 and the invitation-only Open Gardens since it began in 2011, and is open on both again this year. As you might guess, this is my absolute favorite time of the year (besides the Ride for Roswell).

It is open to visitors July 17 & 24, 4-8pm for Open Gardens. And we welcome guests Saturday and Sunday, July 26 & 27, 10am-4pm for Garden Walk Buffalo. I hope to see you in one of these green havens/heavens soon.

Ellen Goldstein is a Board Member of Gardens Buffalo Niagara. Ellen is the founding editor of the Jewish Journal of WNY, a monthly magazine which began in 2013. Over her career, she has also worked as a marketing and community relations director, TV producer, ad agency copywriter, and photographer for the Associated Press. She began gardening as a child in North Buffalo and has never stopped.