‘ THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE PUMPKINVILLE’
Giant pumpkin murals are signature of OKC fall fest
Somewhere inside the Myriad Botanical Gardens, a hot air balloon is waiting to carry visitors — or at least their imaginations — somewhere over the rainbow.
Since this particular balloon is made of hundreds of mini pumpkins — with a basket crafted of three Pink Banana squashes — it’s not actually aerodynamic. But if it gives folks the sense that they’re not in Kansas — er, downtown Oklahoma City — anymore, then Nate Tschaenn will have again succeeded in making enchanting art out of fall’s favorite fruit.
Established in 2012, Pumpkinville is the biggest annual fundraiser for the Myriad Gardens.
“October is all things pumpkin. If you turn pumpkins into a pretty picture, people just go crazy for it,” he said with a grin.
The Myriad Botanical Gardens’ director of conservatory and horticultural exhibits, Tschaenn is a main man behind the curtain of the giant pumpkin murals that have become the signature attraction of Pumpkinville, the Myriad Gardens’ annual fall festival.
A popular downtown OKC tradition, Pumpkinville celebrates the season with autumnal activities, live entertainment, unlimited rides on Mo’s Carousel and creative displays crafted from hay bales, mums, cornstalks and 30,000 pumpkins. With the slogan “There’s No Place Like Pumpkinville,” the harvest wonderland will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 8-24.
“I enjoy trying to find something that works well with the theme,” Tschaenn said. “This year is ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ which kind of took me by surprise, but I can work with that. ... As long as we keep coming up with good themes, it makes my job easier.”
Fundraising with fall festivities
Established in 2012, Pumpkinville is the biggest annual fundraiser for the Myriad Gardens. Eric Himan, director of events, said admissions and memberships sold during the fall fest help to keep the outdoor gardens, including the popular Children’s Garden, free to the public the rest of the year and enable the nonprofit Myriad Gardens Foundation to offer free and low-cost year-round programming.
“It gives us a lot of opportunity to be able to keep things running and beautiful here. ... We even have a brand new Crystal Bridge coming in next year,” said Himan, referring to the cylindrical tropical conservatory, which is currently undergoing a total renovation.
The festival has become known for its familyfriendly themes, old-fashioned fun and inventive décor made from pumpkins and other seasonal vegetation. Local artists often join forces with Myriad Gardens staffers to transform the downtown OKC green space into a harvest wonderland.
“Artists are appreciated and artists are paid and welcomed to bring what they do to what people expect from the Myriad Botanical Gardens,” Himan said.
Turning pumpkins into art
In 2017, Ashley Elkins, then the Myriad Gardens’ public events coordinator, invited her mother, local artist Dana Elkins, to design a large-scale mural to match Pumpkinville’s Western theme. Dana Elkins devised a stylized buffalo standing under a beaming sun, Moore Norman Technology Center carpentry students built a wooden framework for it, and Tschaenn filled out the scene with an array of pumpkins, mini pumpkins and gourds.
It was a crowd-pleaser, and Myriad Gardens’ staff took notice.
Tschaenn especially has embraced the challenge of coming up with more and bigger murals, with his past projects depicting a lion, elephant and monarch butterfly. He creates his designs with a computer program and plastic edging, and as with a traditional mosaic, creates the big picture out of thousands of smaller, colorful pieces.
Only instead of the traditional glass pieces or tiny tiles, the horticulturist crafts his mosaics out of pumpkins and other fall foliage.
“I don’t think people would appreciate it as much if it was made out of anything else. It’s novel (for them) to be made of pumpkins,” he said.
“There’s lots of varieties of pumpkins ... but it’s a limited color palette. Every year I do these murals, I’m like, ‘ What can I do that’s orange, white, black or green?”
Since Pumpkinville is off to see “The Wizard” this year, Tschaenn crafted an 8-foot-by-8-foot mosaic featuring one of Oz’s angry apple trees and then devised his biggest pumpkin mural to date: a 10-foot tall and 16-foot wide landscape depicting a hot air balloon landing outside the Emerald City.
“We didn’t do this last year in the same way, and everyone has a connection to that film,” Himan said. “Going big with something iconic that everyone has a memory with ... seemed like a good COVID comeback.”
Going even bigger
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pumpkinville with its bustling crowds was swapped out last year for the Great Pumpkin Patch, a free socially distanced celebration showcasing several pumpkin murals. Piedmont artist Nick Bayer was recruited to cover the Myriad Gardens’ Water Stage with a supersize version.
“The stage is like 40-feet across, which is giant. So for us, the idea is that if we can keep it simple in our design, it’s going to be the most effective,” said Bayer, who has been working on the Myriad Gardens’ special events for about six years.
“It’s kind of like a giant coloring book, except we’re using pumpkins for the color.”
To create his massive mosaic, he sketches out a line drawing, scales it up, and then creates foam borders to corral the pumpkins and provide clean outlines. After staging a mural of fall leaves in 2020, Bayer and his team worked this year to build a sunning scarecrow out of 30 pallets of pumpkins.
“Last year ... people loved what we did. It was just all over social media and kind of just blew up. I actually think this is starting to become a yearly tradition for the Myriad Gardens, to do the giant pumpkin mural on the Water Stage,” he said.
“And I know so many varieties of pumpkins now. ... There’s Enchanted, there’s Pumpkemon, there’s the Fairytales, there’s the Cinderellas.”
Although Tschaenn was already familiar with an array of pumpkin varieties, there’s one aspect of making the murals he’s still not mastered.
“Don’t ask me how many pumpkins because I have no idea. I never count,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m not really good at those numbers. I know people are always curious to know ... but I always have to just take a wild guess.”