Faith, fellowship and flowers
Carol Harvey stands among some of her many varieties of flowers – most of which she starts from seeds and arranges in pots herself. Her yard is the setting for the annual United Women in Faith garden party. Staff photo by Kay fate
There’s no turning back now for Carol Harvey – not that she intends to.
For the last three years, she has hosted a garden party, and what a garden – and party – it is.
It actually started about 15 years ago, when she approached her backyard neighbor.
“When we first moved in here,” said Harvey, “the back (property line) was all bushes, and one Mother’s Day, I got the idea to pull up all the bushes.”
They actually belonged to that neighbor, though, so Harvey asked, and received, permission to remove them.
The first year, “we just planted a few hostas, and then I decided I wanted a little memorial garden for my dad,” who had died a few years earlier, she said.
“I had a little area that was just the memorial, and then that wasn’t enough,” she said, so she planted more flowers and hostas “down a ways,” along the former fence line.
“Then that wasn’t enough,” Harvey continued, and the floral footprint continued, too.
It now encompasses the entire property line in the backyard, a small area off the back deck, and both sides of their driveway and garage. A large chunk of the front yard features a colorful display of lilies and other flowers.
It was a natural fit for the Owatonna Arts Center’s annual Secret Garden Tour, which featured Harvey’s yard in 2024.
That was also the first year she hosted the June garden party, something she intends to continue as long as she can.
“This is all Carol’s baby,” said Jean Krause, a longtime member of Owatonna United Methodist Church.
“She makes the lunch, and her husband and her grandkids all help… it’s just lovely,” said Dorothy Peterson, another member of Owatonna United Methodist Church.
It’s a way to share both her faith and her flowers, Harvey said.
Krause, Peterson and Pat Rethmeier have been members of the same women’s circle at OUMC for more than 50 years. There have long been summer gatherings for the women of the church; sometimes featuring a speaker, other times lunch at the church or a restaurant.
“Just so all the women could come and gather,” Krause said, “and now Carol does this. It’s her mission.”
For years, it was billed as a United Methodist Women event; the group has been renamed United Women in Faith, to include others.
“They’re still our sisters, so we don’t want them to feel left out,” said Connie Scott, a former Owatonna resident and church member.
She now lives in Mankato, where she is a conference officer and became a deaconess with the United Women in Faith last month, consecrated by a bishop.
“I like to speak about (UWF), because it’s important to me,” said Scott, who drove over from Mankato for last week’s party.
Harvey plans for 50 guests – and has hit that number every year. She makes a Facebook post, inviting her sister-in-law, her niece, neighbors and other friends, and also invites women from Red Oak Grove Lutheran Church, between Blooming Prairie and Austin. Harvey attended there as a child with her parents.
There is a prayer to start the event, “then it’s supposed to be strictly a social event,” Krause said.
The women sat at tables in the garage and under canopies in the driveway, away from the steaming midday sun.
Harvey served chicken salad on croissants, fresh fruit and a pasta salad, along with iced tea, followed by a fresh raspberry dessert.
She’s neither a trained chef nor a trained gardener, she said, dismissing the idea. Instead, she spends about an hour every night, “watering and dead-heading and stuff like that.”
Harvey saves all of her dahlia plants every fall, “all the tubers, the geranium roots. I dig them out of the dirt, and take just the root and a little bit of the stem,” she said.
Six boxes full of dahlia and geranium roots spend the winter in her basement.
“I start them in the house in March,” she said, then brings them outside when spring arrives for good.
Harvey adds something every year, she laughed, “because it’s never enough.”
She buys very few, however, and is quickly able to identify her vast variety of blooming plants.
“They’re an off-breed of a petunia,” she said to a woman asking about a basket of vibrant pink and orange blooms.
Being in and among her flowers, she said, “is my happy place.”
But only outdoors: “If you wanted me to have something in the house, it would be dead in a day,” Harvey said. “I don’t have a single plant in the house. I can’t do it. I’ll kill them.”