Monroe County Garden Tour

I love visiting other people's gardens, so I was delighted to take the Monroe County Garden Club's tour last weekend. The weather was perfect - not too hot - and the rainclouds had disappeared, at last. There were nine gardens open to the public, and H.H. and I managed to visit six of them. We probably could have done more if we hadn't stopped to chat so long at each place, but when gardeners get together you know there is plenty to talk about. Each garden was so very different, and I got some great ideas from them. Looking for new ideas is one of the reasons I love garden tours so much.

The first garden, a terraced garden on a wooded hillside, was made in memory of the gardener's son. He had registered his mother for the tour, believing her garden worthy of the event, in spite of her protests to the contrary. But he died in a road accident soon after. I am glad to say she went ahead and opened her garden to the public. Her son would have been proud of the result of his mother's hard work ...

Garden #2 was delightful for the many vignettes of objects and plants put together in simple ways. Near the entrance the gardener had placed a wagonwheel against a rustic fence, with a rock for a birdbath. A spirea was coming into bloom to complete the scene.

A second vignette included an old chair next to a small shade garden ...

There were some beautiful lilies in bloom in this garden. As the buds of mine are only just beginning to open, I had to photograph them ...

The third place we visited was a lovely old house, built in 1912, with the original pump house serving as a potting shed. The garden had been a large chicken yard, overgrown with raspberry and forsythia. It is now a wonderful retreat with evergreen trees, an English garden, and a very beautiful water garden...

I was also drawn to this small, above-ground water feature ...

My favorite plant in this garden was a magnificent Japanese painted fern ...

Garden #4 had three impressive ponds, spilling into each other with waterfalls, as you can see in the lead photograph of this posting. There is even an island in the middle of one of the ponds ...

I fell in love with a big, old astilbe in their entrance garden (next to the wicker chair in the picture).

The front of this house boasted a superb shady border ...

I liked the gardener's use of a birdbath stand after the bowl had broken ...

There was another lovely water feature at the 5th garden on out tour ...

This garden had the most unusually located gazebo. We walked along a beautiful woodland path, down steep, wooden steps, into the antique gazebo overlooking Paradise creek, 125 feet below...