Saint John’s UCC Garden in Lansdale Honored by Norristown Garden Club

Dan Sokil | The Reporter•

A summer tour of Lansdale’s gardens has led to a new award for a local church.

St. John’s United Church of Christ was honored by the Norristown Garden Club for their gardens on Main Street in Lansdale, which caught the eye of a Norristown club member during a town tour in June.

"It was a great time of year, because in the beginning of June everything is pretty much blooming. So the gardens really looked good,” said garden club member Don Atkiss.

Located on Main Street at the corner of Main and Richardson avenue, St. John’s has long been a fixture of the borough’s downtown, with the church itself open for public tours during the town’s Founders Day celebrations in August.

Just next door to the church once stood a house that was home to local nonprofit Manna on Main Street after its founding in the early 1980s by St. John’s leadership, including longtime pastor Rev. Sue Bertolette, then was demolished in 2012 and converted over the next two years into a public meditation garden.

"Sue always wanted a labyrinth garden, like a meditation garden, and when they tore the Manna house down, she said, ‘We could put a labyrinth garden in that spot.’ And then one of the church members, one day, just gave her an envelope and said ‘Here, this is to help out with the garden,’ and it was $20,000. So she was thrilled,” Atkiss said.

Outdoor Refuge in Pandemic

That garden has been the focus of near-constant effort from St. John’s congregation members ever since, Atkiss said, with the initial plantings on the plain side, but more focus once the pandemic hit in 2020.

"During COVID, a bunch of us said ‘How about if we spruce it up, and put a pollinator garden in?’ It was basically a butterfly garden, and she loved it. We took out all of the daylilies, and put in a pollinator garden, and now it’s a registered monarch way station,” Atkiss said. "We put labels on all of the plants, so people that walk by can say ‘Oh, I really like that one,’ and know what it is.”

The garden saw plenty of preparation before the first of two summer garden tours in Lansdale this summer, when houses around the town showed off their gardens in two daylong tours that collected donated food for Manna.

Part of St. John’s garden, near the driveway, is a dedicated butterfly garden with a chart of all of the butterflies commonly found in mid-Atlantic states, according to Atkiss, and students from St. John’s Montessori school can study those butterflies as they walk by.

That educational component drew praise from Norristown club members as they visited during the garden tour, as did the potted plants throughout the garden.

Church Volunteer Effort

More than 20 volunteers help in some way, on a dozen pots throughout the church property, the rose garden on the Richardson side of the church, the pollinator garden, and/or the labyrinth, he said.

"People do the mulching and the planting and all of that stuff in the spring, and then we have a group that waters every week,” Atkiss said.

"It’s a group effort, and it’s not particularly difficult for anybody, because we have so many people that are chipping in,” he said.

Skill levels range from master gardeners to hobbyists and volunteers, all of whom were glad to learn their efforts had not gone unnoticed.

"It’s nice to be recognized. You never really know how much it’s noticed, and how much people enjoy it. But people seem to enjoy it, and like it,” he said.

On a typical day, the garden sees a steady stream of visitors: a mother and daughter eat lunch there every day, and other regulars often take lunch breaks there. The award from Norristown acknowledged that it’s a spot located in the heart of Lansdale where visitors can sit and take in nature.

The award was presented on Wednesday, Oct. 11, recognizing the group with a "Landscape Design Award for Excellence in creating and maintaining a place of beauty in your community.”

And while Bertolette herself was honored posthumously with the borough’s lifetime achievement award in August, Atkiss said he suspects she still finds a way to visit the garden.

"There’s a bench in the garden dedicated to her, and I was sitting on that the other day, and saw a hummingbird fly around. I think that might’ve been Sue.”

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