Metro Roundup: Sims Garden plans 2 new events in October

Sims Garden will be bustling this October with two first-time events: a month-long Fall Fundraiser and an Oct. 3 Take-Home Tea Party.

Sims Garden is an Edgewood property formerly owned by Catherine Sims, who donated the property to the city after her death in 2016. Amy Milam, who was hired in 2018 as the first full-time manager of the Sims property, has spent the past two years working to cleanup the garden so the community could walk through and enjoy it. She said she finally feels like the garden is ready for larger community events, which is why she planned the fall fundraiser and tea party for October.

The fall fundraiser will sell pumpkins, chrysanthemums and a combination of the two — called “mumkins.” There will also be a scarecrow trail.

“I realized there’s really nowhere in Homewood or the Over-the-Mountain communities where you can go to a pumpkin patch,” she said. “You have to drive up to an hour out of town if you want to go to a farm or a fun, outdoorsy pumpkin patch.”

The pumpkin patch at Sims Garden will have a wide variety, Milam said. There will be traditional jack-o’-lanterns; knucklehead pumpkins, which are covered in warts; colorful heirloom pumpkins; and more. Pumpkins will range in size from “teeny tiny” to up to 30 pounds, she said.

There will also be at least six different colors of chrysanthemums, which will each be in three-gallon containers. The “mumkins” will be chrysanthemums in a three-gallon pumpkin planter.

The scarecrow trail will get the Edgewood community involved.

“It’s going to be a little competition among the Edgewood neighbors,” Milam said. “Each of them is going to create their own scarecrow and put it in the garden. We’ll have people vote on the scarecrows while they’re here in the garden. At the end, whoever has the most votes will win.”

There will be pumpkin-spiced coffee along with other “tricks and treats,” Milam said.

The fundraiser started Sept. 12, but the fun continues throughout the month of October. The garden will be open daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the community to shop and enjoy the scarecrow trail, but Milam anticipates reduced hours on Halloween Day.

Also this month is the Take-Home Tea Party. Those who order by Oct. 1 — which would have been Sims’ 105th birthday — will receive a tea service for two from Little London Kitchen. Participants can pick up their order from the garden anytime between 1 and 4 p.m. Oct. 3.

“The idea to do a take-home tea party came tome because I had heard that she (Sims) wanted to turn the house into a tea room,” Milam said. “At some point she must have told somebody that, so I thought a tea party would be the perfect way to celebrate her 105th birthday.”

The money raised from both events will go toward completing Milam’s master plan for the garden. She said she estimated the garden will need at least $450,000 for its current landscaping plan, and she said she hopes to overshoot that fundraising goal to be on the safe side.