Gardens Tours

Garden  tour season is heaven for us junkies.
For one afternoon, instead of peeking over hedges or standing around awkwardly pretending to look for an address, we are invited to soak it all in,  picking up amazing ideas for our own little beauty spots.
This gardener remembered the cardinal rule--plant three of the same thing at a time; the clematis looks lush 

If I could it to do over again, I'd hock the silverware and plant a cedar hedge. Keep it tidy and encourage it to grow towards the sky and you have the most breathtaking  background for your garden

This garden has an English look--both tamed and bordering on blowzy. Perfect.

I have no desire to  own a gazebo but I love them in other people's gardens. Seriously, do you see yourself sitting out there? I expect the town marching band to swing in and present a concert.
Of course  you can always stage  a garden wedding and  fill the space with  a string quartet.  Just saying.

This garden was charming and I was captivated by the clever way they increased the height of the fence.

I  appreciate the generosity of the owners. Most of all I appreciate the amount of weeding they have to do to prepare for the tour. One homeowner told me her husband was up the minute the sun rose and weeded for hours every day so that the garden would be perfect.

If it rains, you have to worry about people churning the plot into a mud pit or worse still, hardly anyone shows up.

Gallant people, all of them.

Yin and Yang

My first garden tour of the summer was in nearby Stratford. Generally this town  displays gardens surrounding old stone houses with enormous shade trees,  but this year houses under one century were given prominence.

My preference is low-budget- and- huge- imagination properties although it's always nice to see places where the big bucks were spent tastefully (is that an oxymoron?). I love meeting the owners who have done all the scut work themselves and look slightly dazed from the last-minute touch-ups.

Those who agree to host their gardens are in for relentless hours and hours of weeding so the beds will be gloriously displayed for the big day.

I hope the weeders know how much their work is appreciated as well as  their generosity in showing their gardens

The owners of this shed above know how to work an otherwise blank space; there's a lot going on and it is a stunning effect.

But look at this--the other side is bald, with a raised veggie bed squished close by.

.I like to think they're keeping the center space open for a pool and cabanda.

It's their money--let me fantacise.

Garden Tours

Gardening is addictive.

It calls for a certain get-in-there-and- ditch- the- garden- gloves mentality, where it's imperative to leave the dishes and dust mites for a rainy day while you weed, move plants, sit and enjoy the result of your labors, feed the birds while you're at it--that kind of thing.

When you can tear your eyes away from your own handiwork, then it's time for a garden tour or several where you can admire the work of people as passionate about it all as you are.



This gardener loves every inch of her property and her front porch says it all.

Her son built the stone wall and using an historical masonry method. I want to adopt him.



While touring about,I photographed this view of lily pads because they looked too perfect to be real and later, I spotted the frog at the bottom center.







Meanwhile back at my personal Eden, the climber roses are calling for their close-up right now so this is my personal garden delight de jour.

A Day In La-La Land

We finally managed our first-of-the-season garden tour, in a town about thirty miles away.

The weather was glorious and we were giddy with the anticipation of soaking in the sight of beautiful gardens and we'd come home refreshed and inspired.

It turned out to be a bizarre time.

We were given a map detailing each garden location, and I suspect the map was drawn by someone who suffered serious cognitive damage during the undertaking. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. Eventually we discovered through trial and error that if we reversed the map directions we could find some of the gardens.

At one place, we were distracted by a man standing shirtless in his front yard with the biggest, I mean super-huge belly I have ever had the bad fortune to witness first-hand.

But the property was worse. The first thing we saw was, smack in the front, an extremely dead, almost fossilized, shrub. We figured the action was around the back (please god) but what we found there was a tiny vegetable garden huddled in a regimented row against the garage wall.

I think the map maker was feeling vengeful.

Most of the properties were beautiful, planned by people with wit and imagination and they were a delight.

It's just that we had to work pretty hard to find them.



One farm was enchanting, made even more so by the wedding party that arrived when we did. Apparently this is a place where wedding photos are taken for the beautiful background. We just found it a touch unnerving, as though we had stumbled in uninvited and we weren't dressed for the occasion.

The absolute worst property search was worth the aggravation. I swear that we drove forty minutes before we stumbled upon our destination, with an apologetic hostess waiting for us. She had received a tirade from each of the few pilgrims who found her home. This was a dairy farm and the owner had carved out a beautiful no-time-for-vacation garden and it was a joy to see.

Better still, she showed us a short-cut back to town that took ten minutes. Too bad the map maker didn't know about it.



Garden tours are heavenly, even nutty ones like this one and we look forward to the next one. Let's hope the map- maker is in a good mood.