I loved this place so much, I brought my parents here.
It is not often that I can take my parents on a day trip. We were going to see relatives that we hadn’t visited in a while, and stopping at ZimArt was a good break in the long drive. Charlene and I had been to this unique place earlier and were quite impressed by the talent.
Today, ZimArt is permanently closed. The site is now run by a different company, but when it was still ZimArt, it featured hand-carved statues by Zimbabwean artists. This style of art stands out from all the others and is easily recognizable. Plus, there was real talent to be had in these works of art.
Our first visit was on July 31, 2019. We were on a short weekend trip. I discovered this place during my research and had to visit. The outdoor art gallery was free to visit, and the best part was that everything was for sale. Which, in reality, sucked, because these were of great quality and craftsmanship, and I wanted to buy them all and display them in our own yard. We perused the area for quite a while. There were easily one hundred carvings on display/sale.
The second visit was on August 13, 2022, when my parents came along. I did purchase a small desktop statue, so at least I have a souvenir from this place. I had heard rumors that this place was considering closing down, and I thought it was a terrible idea. Thankfully, they remained open until Thanksgiving 2023, after 23 years.
The Artful Garden was another place that closed down shortly after I learned about it. Our one and only trip to this place was just a couple of days before our first ZimArt visit. I had also heard rumors that this place was considering closing, and on the day we went, it remained open just a little longer to finish out the season. I was thoroughly impressed with the artwork and the gardens. I saw plants and flowers that I had never witnessed before, and the art was throughout the gardens. It was a very creative display of diverse talents.
Schoolhouse Gardens was a phenomenal display of the love of plants. There was a large variety of hostas, something the owners were very proud of. We toured this place during a Doors Open event on June 2, 2019. We toured the grounds and even had a chance to talk to the owners and share in their collective joy of gardening. This place is also closed now.
I cannot tell how many places we have visited in the past that are no longer open today. There have been some unique stores that I loved to shop in, bakeries that offered great tasting pastries, museums, heritage homes, and even hiking trails that are now closed. When I plan a new trip, I sometimes use research material I gathered years ago, and now that I am in the area, I am hoping to visit a place only to discover it is now closed for good. It has happened that I have skipped an attraction because I could not fit it into the current trip, and planned our next trip around it only to discover it had shut down.
COVID and the harsh, largely unnecessary rules that came with it caused many places on my wishlist to close permanently. Other COVID closures turned out to be temporary, citing that COVID took away all the volunteers these organizations need to remain running, and they reopened once the volunteers returned.
There have been places I wanted to visit that closed down due to retirement. Leases becoming too expensive were the reason others were forced to shut. Whatever the cause, places eventually stop accepting tourists.
Which sucks.
I heard about this place with all these possessed artifacts in the basement of a home. They were open for visits if we had made an appointment. This was a top priority for me because where else can we see a place like this? It is closed now because it violated the zoning laws in the area. Now I know it to be the collection of Ed & Lorraine Warren from the Conjuring movie series. Rumor has it that it will reopen in a different area, but no date has been set, if ever.
Which sucks.
As an avid traveller, I see these closures as missed opportunities. A closure is history lost, art lost, culture lost. A closure is the loss of the passion of those who created the place, along with their hopes and dreams for what it could have become. I see this as sad.
There is no way for me to prioritize one place or another because of an impending closure. It is rare for a place to give years’ notice and allow me time to plan accordingly. Plus, I have literally thousands of sites I still want to visit, so it would be prohibitive to constantly check their status before trip planning.
My only recourse is to keep visiting the places I want to see and hope that when I do get a chance to visit them, they are still open for us to take it all in.
