Sunken Garden

Take a few minutes to sit and enjoy the beauty of the sunken garden! Originally much larger, the garden was designed by Battle Creek landscape architect T. Clifton Shephard and was filled with an array of ornamental trees, shrubs, roses, and other flowers. A decorative fish pond added charm. The garden area was a source of pride for Mr. Kindleberger, but of all the park amenities the garden was the most difficult to maintain. After KVP finally withdrew its support, the city was challenged to provide adequate garden upkeep. To solve that problem, several garden re-designs in the 1980s and 1990s attempted to simplify the plantings and ease maintenance concerns.

In 2000, the Parchment Rotary Club built the gazebo that graces the east end of the garden, and soon the garden became a popular site for weddings and other gatherings. Beginning in 2017, a volunteer group dedicated to garden preservation and upkeep revitalized the garden with perennial plantings friendly to butterflies and other pollinators. These volunteers tend the garden throughout the growing season, insuring that the sunken garden continues to add beauty and serenity to this remarkably diverse community asset, and that Kindleberger Park remains, as Mr. Kindleberger hoped, "the best little park in Michigan."

Photos: Vintage postcard of the flower bordered walk in Kindleberger Park; vintage postcard of the Sunken Garden; 2019 photo of the Sunken Garden; 2019 photo of the Sunken Garden Gazebo; spring photo of the Sunken Garden in 2022