"When flowers annually died and I was a child, I used to read Dr. Hitchcock's book The Flowers of North America. This comforted their absence -- assuring me they lived." -- Emily Dickinson

This Garden is part of the Emily Dickinson Lives! Project and was dedicated on 15 May 2004, the anniversary of Emily Dickinson's death. She was an avid gardener and was buried with a bouquet of violets and heliotrope in her hands.

The Emily Dickinson Lives! Project was funded by Humanities Iowa (a state-based affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities), Enrich Iowa, The Friends of the Bettendorf Public Library, and the Mike and Pat Laas Family.

The Garden is located behind the Library. There is a directional sign past the drive-up window area...just follow the sidewalk.

Garden design and plant research provided by ISU Scott Co. Extension Master Gardeners

Summer Soft
by Judy DePauw

Past Midnight, lost in reverie
her slender, white-draped form
haunts my flower bed:
smelling of balm and berry;
plenteous with pink anemone.

Miss Emily

Movement along my garden path:
footfalls follow consummate care
one cobblestone to the next.
Sleepy, moon blue pasqueflowers:
their essence - with her - commingle.

Resurrection Lily

Black-green vines intertwine,
even as their purple souls,
in nighttime, nod her toward
the unrivaled aroma of my red rose.
"Oh, the Sensuous aroma of my red rose!"

I wonder, this moment,
if the pungent scent of earth
touches her - as you now touch me...