Garden Tour 2008

The following notes have been sent in by Carrie, via email to Mary; linked slideshows are by Martha; and all photos are by Kevin.

1st Annual Neighborhood Garden Tour!

Notes from Carrie Messina (see Carrie's garden)

At 9:00am, Saturday, June 14th, a beautiful sunny day, neighbors gathered at the top of Chilton Ave for our 1st ever garden tour! while waiting for all to gather, we sipped coffed and munched on fresh baked biscuits and scones (courtesy of Elizabeth and Mary) dripping with Karen's delicious honey. Seven backyard gardens were open for tours: 6 on chilton ave and 1 on Lippard. Here are the highlights:

Lucy and Peter's (Henry's parents) front yard garden:

Newly landscaped Japanese garden with fountain and sculpture featuring

• flowering cherry
• azaleas
• heather
• Japanese Maple
• high and low points separated with large rocks; high elements represent mountain and the water fountatin represents the river
• gravel ground cover

Henry and Yuri's garden:

Also newly landscaped Japanese garden like Henry's father's with a few more elements due to the larger space such as:

• Santa rosa plum tree
• nectarine dwarf
• braeburn apple
• tomato plants with healthy looking green tomatoes on the vine
• Houttinia (white)
• Lace cap hydrangea
• blue star creeper? ground cover
• Rhododendron
• small pines (like the forest)

Elizabeth's garden

Front yard highlight:

• Purple flowering tree started as a cutting from the same tree in her backyard. "I just cut one stick fromt he tree inmy backyard and stuck it in the ground in my front yard." says Elizabeth, the incidental gardener. And now it stands 3-4' tall a couple years later. Cuttings available for neighbors too.
• Fuchsias, lavender

Backyard: Apple tree, plum tree, and lots of ivy

Mark and Steve's garden

This yard receives full sun and has been renovated over time with a lot of sweat and love. Center of yard used to contains lots of red bricks which Mark dug up and cleverly re-used as borders for the flower beds around the now grassy center. fountain is another feature. Flower/plant beds feature:

• large impatiens along back fence
• bottlebrush tree
• lemon tree
• perennials
• dichondra (drought tolerant)

Kevin & Mary's garden

Kevin is going with a theme of white and shades of pink.

Front yard:

• white petunias for now;
• an unknown silvery grey-green bush mary planted from a cutting in Pacific Heights; it's growing beautifully in our micro-climate (want a cutting?)
• wooly thyme ground cover (nice flowers, but, according to Kevin, when they're first blooming, it produces an unpleasant fragrance for the first couple weeks; gorw)
• Kevin noted that plants do grow well here. He has a soil tester (and is willing to share it) and it appears to be too alkaline perhaps because it used to be covered incement? So, Kevin continues to work this area and of course since it's in the front of the house, we get the benefits too.

And last but not least...

Karen's yard - beekeeper and gardener extraordinaire

We were treated to Karen's honey bee hives and a plethora of plants and were luck enough to walk away with some honey samples. Some notable plants were a lemon tree bursting with lemons, clivia, bromeliads (some extra she gave away) and lots of other plants I couldn't stick around to hear about.