‘Behind AdobeWalls’ tours this month

FOR THE 80TH YEAR, the Santa Fe Garden Club offers its Behind AdobeWalls home and garden tours this month. The 2019 tours include remarkable homes not previously seen on the annual tours. Among themis the former Carol Burnett home and two historic Santa Fe houses.

One of this year’s homes is on Canyon Road and demonstrates the custom of many of the capital city’s oldest houses that grewas the size of the family grew. This one incorporates a former dance hall and boasts dozens of wonderful artworks and an assortment of sculpted fireplaces that were designed and made by Native American women.

The house had long Hispanic ownership until 1927, when it was purchased by an Anglo woman. Her modernizing of the house was carried out respectfully so as not to subtract from its basic Territorial architectural style. The property features amazing gardens and an old, small barn that was built using jacal construction: adobe-chinked cedar timbers set upright rather than horizontally.

The Behind AdobeWalls tours are held from noon to 4:30 on Tuesday, July 16, and Tuesday, July 23. Each excursion features four houses and costs $85 per person.

Tours depart from the Eldorado Hotel, 309W. San Francisco Street (not Hotel Santa Fe, as in previous years). Registration is held there from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m. An optional epicurean buffet lunch ($30) will be served from 10:30 to noon, then the tour groups leave on private buses at 12:15.

The Santa Fe Garden Club uses proceeds for a variety of good causes. It has given more than $400,000 to the Santa Fe Botanical Garden, and its members planted the New Mexico Museum of Art’s Legacy Courtyard Garden and is onsite every Monday to do maintenance. Proceeds from the tours also go toward Santa Fe River maintenance, Santa Fe Community College scholarships, the Valles Caldera Trust, the Santa Fe Conservation Trust, the New MexicoWilderness Alliance, and many more organizations and projects.

Tickets for the tour and lunch may be purchased online at www.santafegardenclub.org. Call 505-660-2393 for more information.

The garden club also has an ongoing series of Pequeño Tours ($50) to local homes and gardens, from mid-April through mid-October. The tours feature up to three residences on a Santa Fe Garden Club-hosted tour of three or four hours. Groups arrange their own transportation. For more information about reservations, call 505-984-0022.

— PaulWeideman