Introductory gardening workshop led by Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp on which plants are safe for dogs and how to keep them out of flower and vegetable beds.
Barkitecture: A Dog Friendly Landscape comes to the Fort Ben Branch on Friday, November 20, from 4 PM to 5 PM. It's an introductory gardening workshop led by garden expert Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp, and the whole thing is built around one specific problem: how to have a garden you love without it becoming a hazard for your dog. If you've ever spent a morning wondering if that new shrub is toxic or why your dog treats your flowerbed like a personal digging pit, this is exactly where you want to be.
Sharp spends the hour on the practical side of things. She'll go over which common plants are toxic to pets, how to keep dogs out of your flower and vegetable beds, and which varieties can actually handle a bit of trampling without giving up. It's the kind of stuff that's hard to piece together from random search results, so having it laid out in one go is a real time-saver. The session is part of the Indianapolis Public Library's Intro to Gardening series, so it's aimed at people just getting their feet wet rather than seasoned pros.
If you want to keep going after the workshop, the library has a few ways to do it. They'll point you toward the IndyPL Seed Library, where you can pick up seeds to start your own beds, and they've put together a recommended reading list that covers a few different angles: Gardening for Wildlife for the nature side, Mysteries for Dog Lovers and Pet Detectives for the dog-centric stuff, and Crossing the Rainbow Bridge for the harder parts of pet ownership. It's a good spread if you're looking to build a full library around your new hobby.
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The Fort Ben Branch itself is a 22,000-square-foot library in a high-traffic community, and it's the first branch in Indiana to become a Certified Autism Center. It also runs on a rooftop solar photovoltaic system that provides 80% of the building's electricity, so it's a pretty green spot to learn about gardening. The workshop runs from 4 PM to 5 PM on Friday, November 20, at 9330 East 56th Street.
Date
Friday, 20 November 2026
16:00
Recommended Age
+14 years
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