Montgomery Botanical Gardens Update
It’s been nearly 4 years since city officials broke ground on the future site of Montgomery Botanical Gardens, in Oak Park.Since the groundbreaking in November 2013, progress on the garden has taken longer than expected.
The president of the garden’s board of directors, Heather Davis, explains that the first few years of the project have been spent laying the ground work. “The legal side and the financial side, that’s in place and we’re comfortable with now saying, we’re going to make this happen” says Davis.
Phase one of the garden was originally slated to open about a year ago, but Executive Director of the project Jacque Foshee explains that they now expect the garden to look pretty close to this outline as soon as this fall.
She says “we have 80 percent of the funds already in hand and that they are now in the final phases of getting irrigation and plant quotes.
Davis goes on to explain that “these are things that you can actually see, you can visualize that things are moving in the right direction the other things that we did ahead of time…they weren’t plants, and it wasn’t a sprinkler system and it wasn’t really a garden it’s the boring stuff that you do to prepare.
Foshee says she is looking forward to completing the project for all ages to enjoy. The director says “children of all ages love running around botanical gardens elderly people can come and get peace and relaxation here. A botanical garden reaches everyone”.
If you are interested in donating or, volunteering your time you can visit the website for the Montgomery Botanical Gardens here.
