“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.” ~Janet Kilburn Phillips On a breezy, chilly day Master Gardeners: Trisha Haislar, Pat Quinlan, Sarah Wilkerson and Bob Winkler met at the historic D.D. Collins House to begin planning the gardens. The ladies are all members of the Collinsville Garden Club; Bob is from the O’Fallon Garden Club. He is responsible for the Community Garden in that city. Many people from the community garden there. The design is wonderful and so

The Collinsville Garden Club has been a long-time supporter of the D.D. Collins House Project. Lavadna Hines and Dolores Kirby, members of the Garden Club, present a check in the amount of $500.00 to Bill Iseminger, Chairman of the Collinsville Historic Preservation Commission, while Arvil Wrigley, a commissioner of the CHPC, joins in accepting the presentation. This money helped develop the gardens that are being planted at the house. Arvil Wrigley, who has since passed away

AGNES IN THE GARDEN: In the first short entry, I told about my father's buying the Collins House in 1998 just four years before he died at the age of 97. At that time the house was referred to as the Bonn House for its longtime owners, Walter and Agnes Bonn. I remember that my parents often stopped by when they spotted Agnes working in their backyard vegetable garden. My mother especially liked Agnes's Goldenglow, an old-fashioned flower that provided color on the alley. Gold

Irving Dilliard takes a ride past the D.D. Collins House to check out the work being done at the house, which involved the removal of a one-room, attached store front which had been added to the house. That addition was originally a small grocery store built in about 1905; later the location became home to the Curl Up & Dye beauty shop. The building seen on the far right, which once housed Fisher’s Florist, is currently a driving school.