The Indianapolis Cultural Trail being built through the heart of downtown will include sculptural gardens dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln.

The gardens, to be completed by the end of the year, are an extension of the Glick Peace Walk, which is on the trail along Walnut Street between Capitol Avenue and Meridian Street. The idea behind the $2 million Peace Walk is to honor great humanitarians with a series of educational monuments, which Cultural Trail officials refer to as "luminary gardens."

The garden dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. will be on the southeast corner of the intersection of Washington Street, Virginia Avenue and Pennsylvania Street. (For happy hour regulars, that's in front of Scotty's Brewhouse.)

Abraham Lincoln's garden will be at the southwest corner of Washington Street and Capitol Avenue, near the Simon Property Group headquarters.

Work on the eight-mile urban trail so far has circumvented weekday hubub around Monument Circle, but all that is about to change. Construction will start this spring on the trail's central corridor, which will follow the north side of Washington Street from Alabama Street to West Street. According to the trail's most recently posted construction updates, Indianapolis Power and Light was scheduled to start its preparation work this month at Delaware and Washington streets and move westward.

Also this month, AT&T was scheduled to start relocating lines across Virginia Avenue, between South and McCarty streets, in preparation for work on the southeast corridor to Fountain Square.

Wondering what's happening with that torn-up block of  Alabama Street between Market and Washington streets near the City-County Building? The Cultural Trail expects to finish its work there in April. The same goes for the one-block stretch of Capitol Avenue from Washington Street to Maryland Street.

Thanks to a $20.5 million federal stimulus grant, the $62.5 million Cultural Trail expects to be substantially complete before the 2012 Super Bowl.