The Bouquets on Wheels program is sponsored in part by The Kroger Company and Dakota Plastics.

Each week, 2nd grade teacher Dede Gardis brings a class to the gardens to prepare fifty miniature bouquets that are inserted in florist water tubes to keep them fresh. They are picked up by a Meals-on-Wheels driver then delivered along with the meals.   Each child makes two bouquets and draws pictures or writes short notes on cards they make.

The idea for Bouquets-on- Wheels came  from Granny's experience with her own mother receiving  Meals-on-Wheels.  The Meals program helps her family to allow her 90 year old mother, Audra, to remain in her own home. Granny planted a picking garden at her mother's house so they could tend it together on her weekly visits. It became a part of their routine to pick flowers to deliver to the neighbors. 

One day, they picked a bouquet for the volunteer who delivered her mother's meals.  It occurred to Granny that it would be nice to be able to share the flowers with the other people he delivered meals to.  After that, each week they would prepare six bouquets for the people the volunteer delivered to after leaving Audra's. When she started the school garden program, Granny initiated Bouquets- on-Wheels.  The photo above is of Audra, at 85 years old, pulling weeds on a visit to the gardens.  She turned 93 this year (2009).