The Martha Timm Rock Garden is fenced off in New Hampton, Iowa’s Mikkelson Park, making photography a challenge but visiting easy. You can just walk up any time and look.
An information sign supplies what little information I can find about this modestly scaled art environment:
“Martha Timm and her husband were retired to a home in New Hampton from a farm southeast of the city when she began the building of her rock garden. It includes rocks from every state of the union, collected by her and for her by relatives and friends in their travels. The shards of glass and pottery were also painstakingly gathered through the years. Much of the cement used in the formation of the various objects was molded by hand, as her craftmanship, artistic talents and engineering skills blossomed out.
“Mrs. Timm loved flowers and gardening and possessed special appreciation of things beautiful.
“Though the rigors of operating an lowa family farm in the first half of the 20th century were demanding of time and effort, Martha Timm kept her large and immaculate gardens enhanced with floral displays, colorful islands in the hardscrabble yards typical of the period, and she took her hobby and seemingly inexhaustible industriousness into retirement with her. She was also endowed with a remarkably artistic aptitude for needle work, with which she occupied many of her long lowa winter evenings.
“Her rock garden is a lasting memorial for her family and New Hampton.
“Donations from the following businesses and relatives made the moving and renovation possible. Davis Motorcycle Rally, Kitchens of Sara Lee, First National Bank, People’s Federal Savings and Loan, Security State Bank, New Hampton Newspapers, Morris Landscaping and Dick Brummond Construction. Relatives of Mrs. Timm included Clyde and Lucille Freeman, Bernard and Mary Stolfus, and Harry and Elaine Gundacker.”
