Open Days Tours Begin This Weekend

Garden Conservancy's Open Days Tours - April 5th-Nov 2nd

If you live near Vero Beach, FL, there's no better way to kick off this year's garden tour season than with a visit to the Greenway garden, open April 5th.  Simple massed plantings complement the overhead canopy of mature live oaks in a series of inter-connected garden spaces planted with macho fern, split-leaf philodendron, Chinese fan palms, and much more. The message: peace and tranquility.

California

Another new garden open this year is the Sonsini Garden in Woodside, CA (San Mateo County) open April 19th. The creation of landscape architect Don Boos, the property is blazing with color in April and May -- azaleas, rhododendrons, dogwoods, viburnums, magnolias.

This garden also features remnants of huge logged redwoods, "antique schist" rock and boulders, a shaded creekside, and many different Japanese maples.

And pick up a free helleborus -- not necessarily this particular cultivar (Snow White Bunting) from the Heronswood Nursery collection.  The first 100 visitors to the W. Atlee Burpee & Co headquarters at Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, PA, will receive a free lenten rose.  There are many trial gardens on the site and several acres of woodlands with many unusual plants collected by Heronswood.

(images: Garden Conservancy)  

Visit the Open Days website  for a complete schedule of  garden tours, or you can order a directory listing the more than 300 private gardens in 14 states that will be open to visitors this year.

Proceeds from the tours support the Garden Conservancy's efforts to preserve and restore important and historic American gardens.  And -- this year's directory was printed on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council with vegetable-dye inks in a process run by wind power alone.  The Garden Conservancy says the energy saved is equivalent to planting 577 trees and saving 11 thousand pounds of carbon emissions. 

That alone is worth everyone's support -- and there's no better way to learn about garden design than seeing some of the best the country has to offer.

Comments

[Philip]

Sonsini...not too far from me! Thanks for that great info. I love all the Arboretums you have here, and plant societies. Very interesting. You have a great site.