Southwind Group | September 12, 2025 | 6:30 p.m. | Potluck and Garden Tour | First Unitarian Universalist Church, 7202 E 21st St N, Wichita, Kansas 67206
Planning and Maintaining a Garden: Tour and Discussion
As always, we will start with a Zero Waste potluck at 6:30 pm. Bring your favorite dish to share and enjoy conversation with fellow Sierrans.
Volunteers maintain these gardens which face the public view of the church, navigating a surprising number of demands and constraints while keeping the gardens as beautiful as possible.
A garden section called "Betty's Place" is used by the children's group on Sunday mornings. It features landscaping that encourages children to interact with nature. They can walk barefoot along a path that features different textures for their feet to experience, listen to wind-chimes, play on a stage, or grow tomatoes, herbs, or squash to learn where food comes from. The gardens are pollinator friendly and are designated as a monarch migration waystation.
Unitarian Universalists share with Sierra Club members an awareness of the harm done by many commercial pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides. Gardening at First UU does not use any of these.
Last year the gardening group was able to water parts of the garden during the hottest part of the summer. This access to water ensured continuation of the connection to nature cherished not just by the children in Betty's Place but also by members of the First UU Pagan group and many others. But this year there are watering restrictions in effect due to the drought Wichita experienced the first five months this year. Although Cheney reservoir is essentially full after the rains the Wichita area experienced in June, the city wisely did not lift the watering restrictions.
The desire to use drought-resistant native plants can conflict with the intention of having plants that feed pollinators throughout the year, during summer, and into the fall. What are the options? What plants will thrive? How much care do they require?
In September we will have an opportunity to talk about all the nitty gritty of planning a garden and then maintaining it, about the different constraints that impact what is feasible, and about what wildlife has been observed buzzing around the flowers.
by Southwind Group ExCom member Holger Meyer