By Joyce Miles
Lockport Union-Sun & Journal
OLCOTT —
Call it colorful community building.
The second annual Olcott Garden Tour will be staffed by 20 homeowners, all eager to show the world that Olcott is still a great place to spend a lazy summer day.
The Saturday tour, a fundraiser for the Olcott Beach Carousel Park, is supported by Olcott and Newfane businesses, as well as gardeners.
For a $10 admission fee, tour-takers will receive a map detailing gardens on show, plus a hot dog for stopping at Moon Doggies, wine tasting at Kempville Wine Shoppe, an ice cream cone at Carousel Concessions, a ride and a game of skee ball at the carousel park, plus a goodie bag stuffed with brochures and light snacks.
Several Newfane-based gardening product vendors will set up shop near the Main Street gazebo too, in case tour-takers feel inspired by what they’re seeing around the hamlet.
“We’ve got lots of participation in this. We’re a small community trying to band together,” said Rosemary Sansone, president of the Olcott Beach Carousel Park Association. “We have a beautiful setting right on the lake; it looks pretty good. (The tour) gives people an opportunity to see another side of Olcott.”
The tour map, which contains the names and addresses of all showcasing gardeners, won’t be available to the public until Saturday morning. Hopefully, people not knowing ahead of time where they’re going encourages them to explore and really notice Olcott, tour co-organizer Jane Voelpel suggested.
Without disclosing too much, Voelpel did say the tour is organized with convenience to visitors in mind. Stops are grouped in such a way that “you won’t be in and out of your car 20 times. For most of the (stops), you’ll park once and be able to see several gardens.”
Seven of the 20 participating gardeners, including Sansone, are returnees who took part in the first tour last year.
Beverly Speller of East Lake Road is a first-time participant. Last year she judged her front-yard “moon garden” and various backyard beds too immature to be shown, but this year she, and they, are ready.
Speller’s moon garden is so named because it consists of all-white flowers, including roses and phlox, that seem to glow at night. Her “purple garden” is just what it sounds like.
“I love color in my flower beds, but on a whim a couple years ago I started developing this white garden ... and it’s coming out very nicely. I don’t see anything else like it,” she said. “It’s kind of interesting when you take a color, give it a bed and just go with it.”
Another first-time participant, Lloyd Minekime, is opening up his East Avenue, Newfane, homestead to show the fruits of a lifetime labor of love.
There’s no theme or scheme driving Minekime’s plots, he said; what you see in bloom around his home is whatever caught his eye at the local stands or was given to him by a friend; sometimes it’s a specimen he sought out purposely because he remembers it growing in his parents’ and grandparents’ gardens long ago.
Day lilies, hosta, hollyhocks, poppies, cone flowers, jade, firs, vegetables and old-fashioned annuals are planted wherever they’ll grow. Minekime isn’t partial to one over the others, although he speaks rather proudly of a “very old” spike — a leafy plant usually treated as an annual — that’s grown to 7 feet tall and looks like a palm tree.
“I’ve been gardening for many, many years,” he said. “I started out when I was a kid. My grandmother had a garden and she gave me a 2-by-4 plot. I’d stick in whatever was left over from her garden. It’s in my blood.”
Tickets for the garden tour go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Main Street, Olcott, gazebo. Official touring hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
