26 Sep Powell Gardens Receives $500 Grant from the Lee’s Summit Rotary

Powell Gardens was recently awarded a $500 grant from the Lee’s Summit Rotary to support the Trails Tales program.

The Trail Tales program is a new collaborative effort between Powell Gardens, the Mid-Continent Public Library, and the Rabbit Hole, Kansas City’s future children’s literature museum and “Explorastorium.” Trail Tales will feature a garden- and nature-themed children’s book on interpretative signage throughout our 170+ acres of cultivated and natural areas from September through October of 2019.

In fall of 2019, we will feature one story to launch the Trail Tales initiative: Flip, Float, Fly: Seeds on the Move by JoAnn Early Macken. Flip, Float, Fly: Seeds on the Move is a story that engages families with the many forms of seed dispersal they will encounter around the gardens. Powell Gardens will display the pages of the book across several story stations along a path in the David T. Beals Woodland & Stream Garden for visitors to explore.  Powell Gardens intends to present Trail Tales as an annual fall feature with continued financial support to assist in marketing and outreach, design and printing costs, and/or replacement of interpretive fixtures.

The Trail Tales program to gives Kansas City metro parents and children the opportunity to connect with one another in nature while enforcing childhood literacy. The overarching goals of Trail Tales are to encourage families to spend more time in nature, promote childhood literacy, and expand the Gardens’ reach to a specific audience: families with children.

Powell Gardens (the Gardens) is a Kansas City treasure with 970 acres of natural beauty less than an hour from downtown. Highlights of the area’s only major botanical garden include the Heartland Harvest Garden, the nation’s largest edible landscape; the Island Garden, featuring more than 200 varieties of water plants; and the David T. Beals, III Woodland and Stream Garden, where plants thrive in the shade.