Quilts have always played an important part in the Amish community of Northwest Indiana and now Elkhart County, the heart of Amish country, has taken the quilt concept one step further with their annual Quilt Gardens Tour, a self-guided tour starting in the spring.

In all, over 100,000 blooms are used to design the quilt gardens and each year there are new garden designs.

The towns

The tour wanders the back roads of the nationally recognized Heritage Trail that courses through old fashioned communities where horses and buggies travel past verdant farms and through quaint towns and villages like Middlebury, Goshen, Wakarusa and Shipshewana.

The gardens

There are 16 quilt gardens, each planted to represent quilt designs ranging from traditional such as the Shoofly Garden once planted at the Farmstead Inn in Shipshewana to the Bird's Eye View, an originally designed quilt garden at the charming Old Bag Factory, a collection of retail shops in historic Goshen.

Murals