Whats coming up this week?

Coming up this weekend is Schedello!  An art and music festival set in the beautiful Schedel Gardens in Elmore, Ohio, which is due east of Toledo.  The gardens are well kept and gracious reminders of another age.  This is only the second year for the festival, and it has expanded to a two day event.

The gardens have an amazing and rich history.  From their website here is a short synopsis:

The land was originally owned by Elmore’s “founding father,” Israel Harrington, but was never developed by him.  The property was acquired in the late 1800’s by Frederick Von Vultee, a local businessman who owned a butcher and dry goods shop in town (in the building currently occupied by Attorney Kent Weiss). A nephew of the Von Vultee family, Frederick Steiffler, was occupying the home and land when Joe Schedel was a border there. Mr. Schedel took a 99 year lease on the house and land from Mr. Steiffler in the late 1920s and eventually purchased the estate outright in 1969.

      The original property was significantly larger prior to construction of the Ohio Turnpike beginning in 1955. That dramatic change, however, prompted the Schedels to create the Japanese garden in the floodplain and also construct the “Shack.” (The Schedel’s summer home adjacent to the lakes in the lowland area of the grounds.)

 

      Not only were the Schedels proficient in landscape and horticulture, but Joe Schedel was also an award winning ornithologist.  He and his wife Marie raised dozens of rare birds and waterfowl on the property — some of which had NEVER been bred and reared in captivity. (the Australian Shell Duck is one example).