6 Redlands gardens will be featured on garden tour
“Secret Gardens of Redlands” is the theme of this year’s Redlands Horticultural and Improvement Society garden tour, which will include landscaped hillsides, drought-tolerant plantings, yard art, a converted dairy farm and more.
The tour, scheduled for April 22 and 23, will feature the gardens of Kimberly Crest, Tony and Cheryl Hicks’ Wild Oak Farms on Live Oak Canyon Road and the gardens of Merry Smith on South San Mateo Street, Betty Richards and Jim Morrison on Country Club Drive, Mike and Cindy Sullivan on Hamilton Court and Don and Sandy Wallace on Golden West Drive. The exact addresses are printed on the tickets.
The gardens will be open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. both days, and ticket holders may visit the gardens in any order.
Tickets, good for both days, cost $15, which includes maps, brochures, garden displays and garden-related opportunity drawings. Children younger than 13 are admitted free.
Tickets are available now at Gerrards Market, 705 W. Cypress Ave., Redlands; Redlands Art Association, 215 E. State St., Redlands; Sunshine Nursery, 34017 Yucaipa Blvd., Yucaipa; and Cherry Valley Nursery, 37955 Cherry Valley Blvd., Cherry Valley.
Tickets will be available the days of the tour at the Asistencia, 26930 Barton Road, Redlands.
Opportunity drawing baskets will also be on display at the Asistencia, and the Citrus Belt Quilters will show their floral opportunity quilt, made by appliqué expert and teacher Sandi Cannarella, at the Asistencia, according to a news release. The Gates Cactus and Succulent Society will also have an exhibit there.
On the first day of the tour, the Redlands Horticultural and Improvement Society will hold a plant sale 9 a.m.-4 p.m. at its plant propagation yard in Redlands’ Prospect Park, at 1352 Prospect Drive, near the Carriage house.
On both days, there will be an exhibit of floral-themed art at the Redlands Art Association Gallery, open 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
About the gardens
• The gardens at Kimberly Crest, which was built in 1897, were redesigned in 1906 under the direction of Helen Kimberly’s son-in-law G. Edwin Bergstrom, known for designing the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The Italian-style gardens include trees chosen from species that were popular in the Mediterranean at the time. The gardens also include ponds and a rose garden.
• Merry Smith’s home was built in 1950 on part of the former Fisher mansion property. With the house behind the mansion’s stone wall, the garden is not visible from the street. When Smith bought the property in 2017, the front yard was partially landscaped, but the back yard had no landscaping or fence.
Smith’s yard, which she describes as “eclectic/ farmhouse style,” now features a detached deck, two vegetable gardens built in vintage iron beds, a vintage 1940s trailer, citrus trees, succulents and a chicken coop in the front yard.
• At Wild Oak Farms, visitors will see a tall bearded iris farm that was started 10 years ago on a former dairy site. The five-acre garden has canyon and mountain views with rock walls lining flower beds and pathways. There are more than 200 trees and a central fountain, and the garden includes roses, spring bulbs, salvias, delphiniums, daylilies, daisies, California natives, mums, hundreds of perennial plants and a duck pond.
Two years ago, the property became a certified wildlife habitat.
• Betty Richards and Jim Morrison removed lawns in 2015 and replaced them with low-water-use landscaping using primarily California native plants. The garden includes desert willows, sages, California fuchsia, yarrow, penstemons and native shrubs, with some space left open for annual wildflowers.
An area with white alder trees was left in place, but converted to drip irrigation. In the back yard, the former lawn has been converted to raised beds for vegetables and a patio area.
• Mike and Cindy Sullivan are the parents of Tim Sullivan, known for his Redlands Orangemen sculptures around town, and visitors will find two of them in the Sullivans’ garden. Mike Sullivan, a space and manufacturing engineer, built the tile-covered barbecue table, the arbor, decks, potting table, greenhouse and garden shed.
The Sullivans have enjoyed hiking wild desert areas and repurposing rusty junk pieces they discovered, such as a kerosene cook stove almost totally buried in the sand and a wooden pump organ. The garden includes two horse troughs, an iron wagon wheel, floral-painted hubcaps, a nasturtium-covered metal dressmaker’s form and iron bed headboards trellising flowers. The Sullivans also have a small vegetable garden and a fish pond.
• Much of Don and Sandy Wallace’s property on Golden West Drive is a steep slope that was overgrown with canyon plants and eucalyptus when they moved there in 2013. Since then, they have replanted the slope with flowers and soil-retention plants and have built a deck extending out over the hill. They have also added a barbecue island, water fountains and patio seating where people can watch birds at the feeders and animals that visit.
For information about the Redlands Horticultural and Improvement Society, go to redlandsgardenclub.com.