Garden tour showcases the beauty of Corrales
Wide range of landscapes on display at Sunday’s event
Alan Weitzel grew up on a 160-acre farm in Fort Morgan, Colo., about 80 miles northeast of Denver, and, despite many years in the air-conditioning business, he never got shed of his love for being outdoors and growing things.
So, it’s no surprise that six years ago Weitzel and his wife, Joyce, settled on a former orchard in north Corrales.
“Most recently, it was an apple orchard, but at one time it had lots of grapes and had a truck garden and a lot of vegetables,” Weitzel, 70, said. “We still have about 90 apple trees. Some of them are 40 or 50 years old.”
The Weitzels live on three acres. Most of the apple trees are on one acre to the west of their house and one acre to the east.
“The center acre is devoted to, besides the driveway, five different gardens, some semi-enclosed in courtyards and others on the perimeter of the property. We have perennials, shrubs and flowering annuals. We provide the water, thin out the weeds and kind of let the gardens do what they want to do.”
Weitzel’s place is one of the six private
gardens that make up the stops on the eighth-annual Corrales Garden Tour from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday.
Nancy Renner, promotions chairperson for the tour, said each of the gardens is distinctive, adapted to its location and reflects the individual homeowner’s personal interests.
Other locations on the tour include a former tree farm, a garden landscaped in the 1990s by renowned designer Judith Phillips and a garden dedicated to propagating and preserving heirloom varieties of trees and plants. Renner said this year’s tour includes well-established as well as relatively new gardens.
Until 3 p.m. today, tickets may be purchased in advance for $12 by going to www.corralesgardentour and clicking on “Buy Tickets.” Tickets purchased online in advance may be picked up, along with a tour map, Sunday morning at tour tents at the Frontier Mart and farther north on Corrales Road. Tickets may also be purchased in advance until 3 p.m. today at Frontier Mart and the Village Mercantile in Corrales; Jericho Nursery locations at 6921 Pan American West Freeway NE and 101 Alameda NW; and at Plants of the Southwest, 6680 Fourth NW.
On Sunday, tour tickets may be purchased for $15 at the two tour tents. Proceeds from tour ticket sales will be used for a Corrales landscaping project.
Artists Dee Sanchez, Pietro Pallandini and Barbara Clark will be among painters working Sunday to capture various aspects of the gardens on tour. Their works will be on sale from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday during the Wet Painting Sale at the tent in front of Mercado de Maya and throughout June at Corrales Fine Arts, 4685 Corrales Road. Farming roots
In his boyhood farm in Colorado, Weitzel’s family grew corn, alfalfa, sugar beets and pinto beans. These days, he and his wife tend a small vegetable garden of tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers and peppers.
But mostly what they grow now are flowering roses, flowering almond, Rose of Sharon, Russian sage, lavender, daisies, columbine, chrysanthemums, hollyhocks, delphiniums and lots of gladiola.
“Gladiola here is kind of like a weed,” Weitzel said. “Unless you dig it out, you have it for a long, long time.”
The Weitzels do not ignore the orchards to the east and west of the central gardens.
“We kind of maintained the geometry of the orchard by filling in for dead trees with chokecherry, Afghan pines, pistache, maples, a redbud tree and some ornamental pears,” Alan Weitzel said.
It all makes for a colorful landscape, but Weitzel said that right now the dominant color is blue.
“Delphiniums have taken over some of the gardens this spring,” he said.
Weitzel said that every place he and his wife have lived over the years — La Crosse, Wisc.; Minneapolis; Santa Fe; and a location farther south in Corrales for 33 years — they have maintained some kind of garden, even if it was only flower boxes at a Minneapolis apartment. Maybe it goes back to his roots on that Colorado farm.
“I enjoy just being outside and the results of working with flowers and vegetables,” he said. “And here, when I’m outside, I can enjoy looking to the east and seeing the mountains.”