Garden Tour

There are several garden tours in my area every summer. I got hooked on them when I was designing a garden for our home. I wanted to have a pond so I paid particular attention to garden ponds and asked loads and loads of questions of the garden owners – do you leave the fish in there all year long? Yes, but you must keep the bubbler going so the fish can get oxygen. The fish go dormant as do the plants. As the water warms up in the spring, both fish and plants begin to awake and begin the cycle again.

The hospitable gardeners who open their garden for visitors to trample through each summer are some of the most generous people on earth. They’ll pull up a bit of a perennial plant and give it to you to thrive in your garden. There are many plants in my garden that were started this way.

I went to two this summer. In my area these garden tours are annual events and are usually fund raisers for the organizations who sponsor them. The ones I attended this season were sponsored by the Historical Society and the other was sponsored by the Science Museum – both vital local organizations.

I happened to miss the one that is my favorite, because of a conflicting commitment. That one is called the Notable Garden Tour – notable, because there are musicians in every garden. This show is sponsored by the Greece Performing Arts Society. This organization believes that gardening is a performing art – and rightly so. Therefore, live music in every garden as well as an artist who is doing some plein aire water color or sketching with charcoals or some other type of easel art. They also provide snacks in each garden at this show. Snacks provided by our local mega grocery. You can see why this one is my favorite.