Parker Pen Archway

I stopped in to RBG briefly this morning for a meeting of our Home Garden Tour Committee (also attended by Jean, Bill, Tim, Barb and Cora) at the Horticulture Center. This is an event that requires lots of advance preparations prior to July 21st, the actual day of the event (10 am - 4 pm). We have a good committee and details are progressing nicely. I also saw Larry, Bill and Maury this morning at the Horticulture Center.

It's been really nice to go thru many historic images over the past couple of weeks. I'm preparing a "pictorial presentation" regarding the history of RBG. A special thanks to Bill O. and Doug V. who each scanned thousands of older images, slides, etc. to help accumulate a nice historical, visual reference of the garden in digital format. We've saved these images and many others in multiple locations so they are safeguarded. In organizing these images, I've run across many great reference shots. I included many images of the druid sculpture in the reception garden in the blog from yesterday. I also accumulated lots of images of the arch leading from the reception garden down in to the sunken garden and some of those images are included here. I would say this archway belongs to both the reception garden and sunken garden. This is the archway to the original Parker Pen world headquarters here in Janesville. This piece is also on permanent loan from the Rock County Historical Society as is the aforementioned druid. The images below show a progression of activity with the assembly of the archway, orchestrated by our volunteer Harold Todd, and the development of both the reception and sunken gardens around that same time (early 1990s).