The board of directors of the Louisville Deaf Oral School (LDOS) will hold its inaugural Spring Garden Expo Friday through Sunday, May 20-22, at Running Water Farm on Old Brownsboro Road.
If it's successful, it's expected to become an annual fund-raiser for the highly regarded preschool for hearing-impaired children.
Legendary Louisville garden planner Mary Webb will serve as the event's honorary chairperson. Many local gardening experts, including Dr. Paul Cappiello, executive director of Yew Dell Gardens in Crestwood, WHAS radio's Cyndi Sullivan, columnists and NPR personalities Jeneen Wiche and Bob Hill, Courier-Journal art and garden columnist Diane Heilenman, and Jefferson County extension agent Donna Michael all will be in attendance at various times to answer visitors' questions.
Volunteers from local garden clubs will be stationed throughout the grounds to answer visitors' questions about the garden's highlights.
Chairing the entire event are Ruth and Jim Onkst. They are being supported by Nancy Welter and Helen Prittie, reservations; Diane Stuckert and Sue Russell, exhibitors; Bob Hook, on-site management; Lou Ellen Williams and Jeannie Ferguson, advance ticket sales; Wayne Jenkins, site layout; Jeannie Livesay, treasurer; Linda Masterson, Mark Eliaison, Marvin Dyer, Sug Schusterman, invitations and preview party; Melanie Koch and Leslie Broecker, marketing and publicity; and Kathy Hensley and Philip Koenig, food and beverage.
In addition, gardening related exhibitors will have booths with various products and displays of their particular interest. Included will be a variety of plants and other horticultural products, garden tools, garden art and equipment, all of which will be on display and available for purchase. The Silver Spoon will operate a garden caf‚ with food and beverages.
The gardens at Running Water farm include an English-style perennial garden with meandering stone-lined pathways, an American Beech hedge and a wide variety of hostas, ferns and oak leaf hydrangeas.
A backdrop for the garden is a massive, old-brick wall with a pair of wrought iron gates that visitors pass through to the Italianate garden with its reflecting pool flanked by a 32-column, wisteria-covered pergola. Visitors can walk the spiral walkway up the 25-foot-tall, oblisk-topped Elizabethan viewing mound.
Also of horticultural interest and dotted throughout the garden's more than 30 acres are a wide variety of beeches, Japanese maples, Kentucky coffee trees, a number of "weeping" specimens of hornbeam, elm, serviceberry, beech, hemlock and spruce, and many varieties of maples, buckeyes and a Japanese larch.
A $125 per person preview party will be held on Friday evening at 5 p.m. It will include a cocktail supper provided by Silver Spoon Catering and the first opportunity to see the expo.
Hours on Saturday and Sunday are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children 12 and under. For more information and to buy tickets, call 515-3320.
Rock 'n' roll gala
The 11th annual Derby Eve Gala to benefit the American Long Association of Kentucky will be an evening of rock n' roll. This long-running event is always a sellout and popular hit.
It will be Friday, May 6, at 8 p.m. in the Archibald Cochran Ballroom of the newly redecorated Galt House Hotel.
This year's rock 'n' roll theme promises a hip party that will pay tribute to the exuberant spirit of the fabulous 1950s through the golden oldies of Motown, with a little British invasion and California dreamin' in between.
The Mamas and Papas' Michelle Phillips will be there to help party-goers reminisce about the good times and great oldies. Gala chairwoman Joyce Jennings says other rock 'n' roll icons who will att/files/storyimages/the party will be announced in the coming weeks.
There will be cocktails, dinner, music and dancing throughout the evening. A nationally acclaimed New York theatrical troupe will present interactive entertainment, along with choreographed and costumed production numbers, in keeping with the rock 'n' roll theme.
A table of 10 is $2,500 or you may reserve individual seats at $250. For details, call the American Lung Association at 363-2652.
