As Tellico Village Garden Club members will attest, the upkeep and beautification of the more than 20 neighborhood entrances is an important component in keeping Tellico Village attractive for longtime residents and newcomers.
“We’ve worked on this garden for 20 years,” John “Jack” Sumilas said about the garden entrance to the Toqua Coves neighborhood. “We took over being the captain over the last year or so ... it’s rewarding too because it ends up looking good.”
When Tellico Village was established in the late 1980s, a group of women who lived in the Toqua and Chatuga neighborhoods planted gardens to improve the scenery. After the Village’s first residents put in four gardens along Toqua Road, a policy change in the community required that each neighborhood have just one garden.
During the initial campaign to create the gardens, $500 was collected through the sale of aluminum cans to start each new entrance garden. Two to three gardens were planted per year with each garden requiring a captain and neighborhood volunteers.
The Tellico Village Property Owners Association provided large rocks, heavy equipment and labor for volunteers to get started.
Today, the Garden Club holds monthly meetings that have featured speakers from the University of Tennessee Gardens, the Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum and local nurseries.
Members of the Garden Club continue giving back to the community by funding and maintaining the 21 garden entrances to the neighborhoods, making and giving garden tool buckets to recipients of Habitat for Humanity homes, landscaping around the women-built Habitat for Humanity homes and donating to the Ijams Nature Center, the UT Gardens and the Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum and other organizations.
Neighborhood garden captains ask for assistance from their communities, and clubs help post signs along the garden entrances to tell residents about upcoming workdays. Joann Truntz works as the liaison between Garden Club members and the garden captains to create a list of volunteers who are willing to assist with garden projects.
“We are always looking for volunteers,” Truntz said. “Volunteers may help with weeding or raking of leaves.”
Garden Club members continue to recycle aluminum cans, with drop-off areas including the Tellico Village POA public works center on Davis Ferry Road and the golf cart barn in Kahite. POA officials take the recyclable materials and send the Garden Club a check, Truntz said.
“We’re very proud of our gardens,” Kay Wilson, meeting facilitator and historian for the Garden Club, said. “This is something that is attractive to people as you pass through the Village.”
Truntz and Wilson said all of the gardens along Highway 444 are planted and maintained by Garden Club members.
“There’s also a garden on the Kahite Trail in the Kahite neighborhood,” Truntz said.
Donald and Nancy Meyerhofer have been captains of the Chatuga garden entrance for the past 14 years. Donald, 76, plans to keep gardening until he’s 80. Then he’ll see if someone else is interested in taking over the garden, he said.
Donald said he asks neighbors to spread mulch in the spring, but that he and his wife take care of the remaining responsibilities.
“The time it takes a little effort is in the spring when you plant and in the fall when you clean up,” Meyerhofer said. “We usually put pansies in the front during the winter time.”
The Garden Club meets beginning with a social time and snacks at 12:30 p.m. followed by a program at 1 p.m. the first Thursday of the month on the top floor of the Yacht Club, and a monthly newsletter keeps members informed of events happening around the area.
Activities held by Garden Club members include plant swaps, a holiday luncheon, a spring bus tour, an annual Tellico Village garden tour, which usually takes place in May, and a potluck luncheon for members in June. These events take the place of regularly scheduled meetings in December, May and June. Garden Club members take a summer break July-August.
Chris Miller has been captain of the Sequoyah neighborhood garden for the past two years and receives assistance from her co-captain, Mary Lou Benson.
“I love seeing the flowers,” Miller said. “I like changing out the flowers, and I like seeing the new growth.”
