‘Eclectic’ Taos
Garden and Home Tour features local artists painting in the gardens
Four unique homes and their gardens will be showcased during the Taos Garden and Home Tour.
The tour on Saturday, Aug. 5, is presented by Los Jardineros Garden Club. Tour participants will visit the Rosarita Compound, Historic New Mexico Hacienda, Diamante del Salto and the Acequia Madre Oasis. Local artists will be setting up their easels and paints at each location. They will paint or sketch the different parts of the gardens they are working in, according to Cat Hayden, publicity chairwoman for Los Jardineros Garden Club.
The Rosarita Compound is made up of four casitas with “funky” and “eclectic” aesthetic touches added to the structures by owner Melissa Serfling.
“She’ll make interesting pathways out to a garden,” Hayden said. “She’ll have a little niche in a stucco wall where she’ll have cute little garden ornaments of some sort. And she also combines a lot of art, as well as different decors in different venues, from different time periods. It’s Taos eclectic is what it really is.”
The Historic New Mexico Hacienda is on the State Registrar of Cultural Properties.
“It is a working ranch that dates all the way back to 1914,” Hayden said. “At one time, it was over 200 acres, and it was a multigenerational, ranching family and one of the largest landowners in Taos County. They have orchards, a gazebo, a covered bridge. They have three acequias on their property, which is pretty unusual, and I think it’s because it’s been in their family for over 100 years.”
The Diamante del Salto belongs to one of the sons who grew up on the hacienda, a few short blocks away.
Acequia Madre Oasis is an “oasis in itself,” because it sits far off the road away from other homes in the area.
“You have 10 to 20 acres of property, and it has very mature aspens, cottonwoods, evergreens, older fruit trees, and it’s surrounded by not only the vegetation of the trees, but it also has some kind of acequia going through the property and a small pond with irises and reeds,” Hayden said.