Art & Flowers at Lilyfest in Hocking Hills

Just a few of the thousands of colorful lilies found in the Bishop Educational Garden. *Photo by Rachel Scofield*

July 10, 2022
By River Scofield, POL Intern
& Sixth Grader at Diley Middle School

Lilyfest is a yearly festival that happens on the second weekend of July. It’s a small event held in the Bishop Educational Gardens at 13200 Little Cola Road in Rockbridge. It has fun activities, places to shop, art and live music. There was a Vikings’ place where I bought cool jewelry and tried to throw axes.

You might be wondering if you need to dress up. I did, but that’s just me being me. You don’t have to dress up, most people were wearing normal clothes anyways.

Naturalist and Artist Nora Steele teaches Mandala painting at Zeller Park. She also owns “Of the Wild Wood”, which is an art studio featuring intricate illustrations of local flora and fauna. *Photo by Rachel Scofield*

Nora of the Wild Wood

Before today I didn’t even know that the Lilyfest existed, but then a new friend of mine, Nora Steele, told us about it. Nora is a naturalist at the Wahkeena Nature Preserve. She also teaches arts and crafts for the Fairfield County Park District. I met her this morning at one of her art events (Mandala painting on rocks at Zeller Park).

I showed her some of my digital art so she showed me some of her digital art. Her art is nature-related which means it involves a lot of animals and plants. My favorite of the art she showed me was a picture of a bird. She was talking about how she was selling her pictures at the Lilyfest so that’s how I found out about it. So, Nora, if you’re reading this, thanks! If you want to check her out her stuff you can visit Lilyfest or you can order from her Esty shop Of The Wild Wood.

The festival does not have rides or a lot of game stuff, but that doesn’t mean that it is not busy. I don’t mean that in a “There’s-way-too-many-people-here-I-can’t-go-anywhere” sense, I mean parking took awhile. We waited 20 minutes to park, but after that it was easy to know where to go and whatnot. Lilyfest itself was not crowded.

Activities and Shopping

Even with the number of activities being small, there was lots of fun stuff. In this section I’ll tell you about the things that were at the festival. I’ve already mentioned axe throwing, so how about I tell you about another place?

One tent (the Master Gardeners from the Hocking County Extension Office of the Ohio State Univesity) had flower painting. Basically you take flowers and squish them on paper to make art. It was cool, all the colors from the petals and leaves would go onto the paper.

There was also face painting, and you could watch people like blacksmiths and weavers make stuff. It was mostly just shops to buy things like plants, artwork, clothing, and more. For example, at one point I got these cool horns from two girls at a Viking tent. Both of their names were Savannah – Adams and Tucker.

There were more shops with cool accessories and whatnot. I saw one shop selling fruit trees – weird, but awesome. Speaking of trees, the scenery of the place was amazing! From flowers to ponds, it was beautiful.

The Land

If I need to be honest, this part is just so I can show you pictures of the amazing landscape. But I don’t think you can blame me, like, look at this: