Hearts of Hope Quilt

The Hearts of Hope quilt garden at the Wellfield Botanic Gardens in Elkhart, Ind. contained 2,477 blooming annuals planted by volunteers. The circles in the middle represented people coming together to help support funding for a cancer cure.
Photo: Elkhart County Convention & Visitors Bureau

The Wellfield Botanic Gardens in Elkhart, Ind., six blocks north of downtown on a historical piece of property known as North Main Street Wellfield, comprises 36 acres of scenic ponds (half the acreage), pedestrian paths and stands of hickory and oak trees.

This is Amish country, and Wellfield has been a source of hydraulic energy and drinking water for the city since the middle 1800s. The Elkhart Department of Public Works operates 13 wells on the site, making Wellfield Gardens is the city's largest source of drinking water.

To support the quilt patterns on the 40-degree slope, vinyl-edging lengths were connected to create interlocking circles. To connect the curves it was necessary to heat and bend tabs on the end of each piece of edging, then clamp the ends together to get the right shape. The tabs were then screwed to the adjoining pieces and the edging secured with steel anchoring stakes.
Photo: Elkhart County Convention & Visitors Bureau

In the fall of 2010, Wellfield Botanic Gardens created a 900-square foot quilt garden dedicated to the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer. It was one of 17 quilt gardens to blanket the Heritage Trail in Elkhart County. The Wellfield quilt theme, "Interlocking Hearts of Hope," was faithfully patterned after an original wall hanging designed by local fiber artist Diana Bennett using Vera Bradley's "Hope Garden" fabric. The Hearts of Hope pattern comprised 2,477 blooming annuals planted by volunteers.

The quilt is beautiful, but a landscape profession looking at it would want to know how the patchwork pattern holds its shape against the landscape's 40-degree slope. Traditionally, string is used to layout the pattern for planting Wellfield's flowerbeds, but the circular pattern of the Hearts of Hope and the slope necessitated more support, in this case a black vinyl (PVC) landscape edging (Super-Edg by Oly-Ola).

The quilt patterns were created using connected edging lengths to create interlocking circles. The vinyl material is lightweight and easier to manipulate. To connect the curves it was necessary to heat and bend tabs on the end of each piece of edging and clamp the ends together to get the right shape. Once the shape was achieved, tabs were screwed to the adjoining pieces and the edging secured with steel anchoring stakes. The edging is almost invisible. When the quilt garden is removed later in the fall, Wellfield Botanic will try to reuse the edging elsewhere in the gardens.

The 2010 Quilt Gardens Tour began Memorial Day and ended October 1. The official garden sites change patterns from year to year.

The Wellfield Botanic Garden was conceived as a community service project in 2002. In February 2005, this project was officially handed over to the garden's board of directors to begin building the master plan, which called for 23 gardens, event spaces, a visitors center and a horticultural center. Buettner & Associates was the landscape architecture firm for the gardens.