Gardening came to the Indianapolis east side neighborhood of Irvington as naturally as an April shower, and over the years the community became known as “the Garden Spot of Indianapolis.” Early accounts tell of gardens fashioned in stiff geometrical designs — stars, crescents, and triangles — ablaze with colorful geraniums, verbenas, cigar plants, touch-me-nots, fuschias, heliotropes, tuberoses, and other delicate blooms. Ladies in the new community could be seen daily for hours on end during the growing season bent over their flower beds digging and arranging their gardens. Cut blossoms were carefully organized into bouquets to grace an entry table or cheer a sick neighbor.
Club woman and suffragist Grace Julian Clarke recalled that the carefully tended garden — a huge star — in the center of the Julian front yard at 115 S. Audubon Rd. was the pride of the family, but it had a strange attraction for the cows, which in early Irvington all too often wandered into the yard. Making straight to the “star” the cows wrought havoc. After the cows dispersed, hours were spent setting things right until another bovine visit.
Floral gardens were not the only sources of pride. Vegetable gardens were common and Sylvester Johnson, one of Irvington’s co-founders, was noted for his cultivation of fruit trees, strawberries, and grapes on the spacious grounds of his home on the southwest corner of Audubon Rd. and East Washington St. A recognized expert on grapes, he developed the Johnson seedless grape in his vineyard.
Vegetable gardening became a patriotic duty with America’s entry into World War I. Vacant plots of land in Irvington were set aside for cultivation to promote increased food production, and local gardeners joined with others in Indianapolis in getting free seeds and attending classes on growing different vegetables. Instruction was given in canning so that the surplus from these War Gardens could be preserved. The lessons learned from this time were repeated during the Great Depression with the planting of relief gardens organized by the Irvington Union of Clubs. Once the harvest was in, the community displayed the canned tomatoes, beans, carrots, beets, and other vegetables. Irvington gardeners again rallied during World War II planting Victory Gardens on vacant lots, including the abandoned Butler University campus.
While having a vegetable patch in the backyard was and continues to be popular gardening among Irvingtonians, the panoply of color from flowering plants has been an enduring feature of Irvington gardens. In 1931, the Irvington Women’s Garden Club was formed and it promoted flower shows and garden tours. One avid gardener, Jennie Forsyth Jeffries transformed the grounds around her home on University Ave. into unusually attractive gardens containing 5,000 tulips and other blooms. She was recognized twice with the grand prize in Indianapolis beautification contests. A neighboring gardener Lulu Hughel was one of Irvington’s most active gardeners and would serve as president of the Garden Club of Indiana in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s. She was an early proponent of rock gardens and pioneered in bringing plants — sedum, aubretia, dianthus, pulmonairia — suitable for these gardens to Indiana. In addition to the 4,000 tulips and 250 varieties of iris in the garden at her home on Ohmer Ave., she was an experimenter for the United Sates Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Plant Industry, receiving plants from all over the world — lilies from China, peach trees from Persia, cacti of all kinds, many kinds of maple trees, five to six varieties of forsythia, and the lacy lilac from France. During World War II as Victory Gardens were being planted, Hughel advised, “Don’t plow up your flower gardens. We need the flowers for morale . . . we do recommend planting a border of carrots around your flower bed…”
In addition to its many private gardens, Irvington also had several commercial gardeners beginning in the 1890s with the Edward Teas Nursery in the first block of North Irvington Ave. Teas, a noted name in Indiana horticulture, re-located his business from Wayne County to Irvington and at the time was the largest provider of seeds for gardeners across the country. Another local commercial gardener at the time was George Butcher whose small farm extended north of Pleasant Run along the east side of Ritter Ave. He grew vegetables and flowers and had a stand at the City Market. Later Walter Jenney built his home on a portion of the Butcher farm along east St. Clair St. The area was called “Weed Patch Hill” although the quality of the Irvington Gardens that Jenney maintained would belie that name. He cultivated over 300 varieties of shrubs, trees, roses, peonies, and other perennials and annuals that he sold from his gardens. It is little wonder that when this area of Irvington was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places it was called “Irvington Garden District.”
In the 1920s, Charles Heagy developed the Lone Elm Peony Gardens at his home in Irvington Terrace. Extending north from Lowell Ave. to Pleasant Run Parkway, the colorful blooms from these gardens earned Heagy several silver cups at flower shows over the years. An Irvington showplace, Lone Elm Peony Gardens offered more than 80 peony varieties including, among the rarest of greatest beauty, the “Lady Alexander Duff,” a plant whose roots at one time sold for as high as $75. Heagy also developed one of the original rock gardens in Irvington.
For nearly 150 years Irvington gardeners have been working the soil each spring, slowly coaxing seeds and bulbs and roots to bring forth their wondrous glories, however briefly, to delight the senses. While these gardening traditions have continued to be encouraged since 1999 by the present Irvington Garden Club with public plantings beautifying the community, annual garden tours, and a farmers’ market, the natural fantasies — violets, spring beauties, snow drops, Dutchman’s breeches, trilliums — that one finds along Pleasant Run, in the woods of Ellenberger Park, and in the wild corners of yards along the wistful streets of Irvington responding to the gentle warmth of a March sun or the refreshing drop from an April shower, are the most miraculous gardens in “Irvington’s flowery kingdom.”
