Indy Arts Garden

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My first tip for someone reading this blog is to pack a nice basket of snacks and a blanket! This park is relaxing, quite and very easy to enjoy. Its right next to the actual IMA building and there is free parking as well as it being free to explore as well. You will be walking a bit to cover the grounds so bring water as well. Walking through some of the gardens by the Eli Lilly family house reminded me of some of the gardens in Europe with Greek statues tucked about here and there. We came upon the Eli Lilly home by accident as I did not know it was going to be there. The Eli Lilly Family is a prominent family from Indianapolis who built a pharmaceutical empire and has a prominent building downtown that employs a great deal of the city. The home was turned into a museum of sorts for the public to get a glimpse of the families history. The house is air conditioned, a big plus after the heat we endured from exploring the grounds. The front desk attendant was very pleasant as I needed help understanding the importance of the family as I'm not from Indy. My children enjoyed pretending they lived in the house and were impressed by the library and secret passage from the second floor to the desk room on the 1st floor. They also panicked, much to my amusement as to all the china ware in the cabinets and agreed doing dishes would be "a pain in the butt" as a chore in this house. (Giving your children a gift of knowledge from the past for their future dreams is a great gift). After exploring the house we took off to find the more modern installation art pieces geared towards children. The "Chopstix" installation is one of the well known pieces and "Funky bones". Choptstix is a piece down from a very large tree cut down somewhere in Indian and has swings suspended from it. Funky Bones in a huge skeleton that invites them to stand on and explore. There are a few more pieces that you can look up to find info about, maps are located throughout the grounds too. Hope you get a chance to enjoy this place!

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