Garden splendor
Summer’s tours showcase nature at its colorful, creative best
Every year gardeners look forward to attending their favorite garden tours to get ideas or talk to other gardeners about what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes tour-goers get small tips that help them improve their green spaces, but discovering one gorgeous plant or a beautiful pond can also start a major renovation.
This year there are plenty of garden tours to choose from. Many have been around for a while — some more than 20 years — but there are new tours.
One of the oldest is the Door County 57th Annual House and Garden Walk on July 25.
Jan Golden, a member of the group that chairs the event, said the tour has been a success for so long because of the striking homes and gardens it features, as well as the extra events it includes. The tour is hosted by the Door County Medical Center Auxiliary.
“We try to find houses and gardens that are unique and beautiful and have a story to tell,” she said. “This year we have a wonderful array of homes and gardens as well as The Garden Door, which was created by the Door County Master Gardeners.
The Garden Door, located at the University of Wisconsin Peninsular Agricultural Research Station near Sturgeon Bay, has a fairy garden, a pond with koi, a children’s play area, a butterfly garden, a wind and sound tunnel, an ornamental grass area with bottle trees, and annual and perennial beds. There is also a community garden where the Door County Master Gardener Volunteers and research/extension office personnel plant and harvest crops each summer.
“We are also having a pop-up store with local artisans selling their items, and there will be local artists at select homes painting,” she said.
One of the new tours this year is the Whitefish Bay Garden Club’s “Quilts in the Garden Walk” on July 23.
Ann O’Connor, chair for the walk, said 40 to 50 quilts will be displayed in 10 gardens.
“The addition of quilts into the spaces was an idea from some of the artists and quilters in the club,” she said. “The quilts will introduce another element of beauty into these already stunning and hard-working spaces. The quilts — some of which will be for sale — are carefully chosen by the artists and quilters in our club with an eye to complementing garden features.”
O’Connor said that in addition to quilts and beautiful flowers, the tour also highlights residentially scaled measures that individuals can take to protect and preserve the environment.
The gardens showcase “a variety of environmental features such as pollinator-friendly plantings, aesthetically pleasing rain gardens, rain barrels, and pesticide-free yards,” she said. “For the past few years a motto of the Whitefish Bay Garden Club has been ‘Growing a greener village ... one garden at a time.’ ”
O’Connor added that the club has a history of environmental activism that dates back to its role in founding Riveredge Nature Center.
“The club strives to serve as environmental stewards. We assist the village of Whitefish Bay in identifying and removing invasive plants on the bluff; we help support eco-friendly organic turf management in the parks; we share knowledge of migratory birds and their flight patterns in southeast Wisconsin with students in the schools; and we maintain a butterfly garden at Cahill Square,” she said.
Another new tour this year is the Brown Deer in Bloom garden tour on July 15 that is put on by the Brown Deer Junior Woman’s Club and the Brown Deer Beautification Committee.
Julie Cook Quirk, Brown Deer Beautification Committee chair, said the groups decided to have a tour because the beautification committee had been giving residential and commercial garden awards for 15 years, and found many gardens that were so striking they believed they should be opened to the public.
“Some of these gardens are just breathtaking . ... It’s a shame for them not to be shared,” said Quirk, who added that the group also hopes others might follow suit.
“Gardeners are very generous people. They share plants and tips,” and this inspires conversation between neighbors who then might emulate these gardeners, she said.
Other pluses are that all the gardens have been designed, planted and maintained by the homeowners, rather than landscape professionals, and that they feature a variety of garden styles and will show different gardening techniques.
“Each one is a gorgeous labor of many years of love, and the homeowners themselves have accomplished it. You can see what they’ve done and take their ideas home with you for inspiration. The homeowner gardeners will also be available to answer guests’ questions during the tour.”
Quirk said the tour will show shady and heavily wooded gardens, how to pare conifers with underplanting, recycling and mulching methods, outdoor living spaces, garden sculpture and whimsical pieces, and lots of colorful perennials, annuals and mature planting beds.
In addition to the home gardens, the Lynden Sculpture Garden will be included on the tour. There, tour-goers can see a youth pollinator garden, which attracts butterflies and bees, a bonsai garden, and more.