Miss the Arden Park Garden Tour?

Whew. It's over. As much as I love going on garden tours, I'm realizing that GOING on a tour is a lot easier than BEING a part of the tour. I'm also learning that no matter what, I will always over extend myself. Perhaps working full time, having my daughter start kindergarten, throwing her the Alice in Wonderland bash a couple weeks ago, AND trying to get ready for a garden tour....well, it was a bit much.
The past few days had my mind spinning. I started questioning myself as a gardener as I saw these other beautifully designed and mature gardens that were on the tour with me. The pre-tour made me stress out, but obviously with just a few days before the actual tour, there was little I could do. I have a habitat garden. I have a children's garden. I have an edible garden. Most of the time I am extremely proud of this, but I don't take criticism well and I wasn't sure what kind of comments I'd hear from my visitors.

So, I changed things up a bit... and did this tour my own way. I enlisted the assistance of friends; friends who share a passion for the way I'm doing things on my third of an acre. I had Charlotte and Kristi, pictured above with me, answering questions on how to grow things organically, as they handed out Peaceful Valley Farm Supply catalogs and free houseplants that we got from Costa Farms . Also included on this table were the spring and summer catalogs for Annie's Annuals, which it was SOOOOO much easier to hand folks a catalog instead of labeling all of my plants! haha!

I also had a whole table dedicated to my favorite businesses and causes. Corona Tools sent some nice canvas bags for folks to fill up with their planting and pruning guides, their recent tool catalog, and if they were one of the first 50 visitors they got a really nice ergonomic trowel from them! Also included in my favorite vendor table was Trailmix.net (my favorite store for helping parents get their kids outdoors!), Talini's Nursery (who have an amazing selection of garden decor, edibles, natives, and Annie's Annuals plants!), Dripworks (irrigation supplies), DRAMM (fun colored hoses and sprinklers), Schreiner's Iris Gardens (my favorite source for iris bulbs!), Stark Brothers (supplier of fruit trees to help people integrate edibles into their gardens), Urban Renewal Landscaping (my gardener, and the only landscaper in the Sacramento area that I know of for the organic gardener!), H. Potter, Authentic Haven Natural Brew tea, and River City Food Bank.

Moving along to my helpers, my friend Amy came out to represent The Lamm Farm!

Amy was super popular on the tour! People were very interested in hearing about her family's lavender farm, and to learn about their recent addition of honey bees. Amy brought several books as resources, and photos of their hives. I loved seeing so many people interested in honey bees (perhaps my neighbors wouldn't mind if I get some? haha)

Speaking of honey bees, since I consider our garden an education garden- I decided to lightly "push" some of my personal beliefs on my visitors. On this table we had ladybugs, where visitors could see with their own eyes how quickly these little beauties can devour a branch full of aphids and white flies. If I convinced one person this day to stop using pesticides and go the organic route, it was worth the time and effort I put into getting my garden ready for the tour. Next to the ladybugs I included a stack of Farmer Fred's "Plants That Attract Beneficial Insects", so that people will stop complaining about how the ladybugs that they buy leave within an hour (um...it's because you don't have anything they like!). The ladybugs were also fun for our younger visitors, which enjoyed it when we let some out occasionally....

Back to our beneficial insects, and more specifically BEES, I included educational signs next to our bee boxes. I also made sure I pointed out the countless holes in our fence that were nests for our native bees and mason bees. The visitors were AMAZED. None of them had seen such a site- and I'm pretty sure they were all going to go home and look for the holes in their own fences. Here I've been thinking my life goal was to educate children, but educating adults on our native bees was so much fun! Pretty sure the other houses on the tour didn't do this, but I am a little more interested in bugs than the average person (I never got around to labeling our worms bins for the tour, and sure enough no one asked about them!).

Have we talked enough about beneficial insects? No? Good! Because we had praying mantis galore for the tour! There were so many visible I was starting to think they maybe called each other to organize this little garden party of their own. Or maybe they just wanted to get into the Sacramento Bee? (ahem, too bad, my daughter got in instead!).

I think I counted three or four of them on my verbena bonariensis which I'm not surprised about because it's covered in bees and butterflies right now.

Speaking of the verbena bonariensis, this was the most popular plant on the tour. Soooo many people asked “what the heck is this?!”, and thankfully I was able to direct them on where to purchase one. I bought mine originally from Annie’s Annuals, but I saw a bunch of them at Talini’s Nursery a few days before the tour. Did I mention it has been blooming for over 6 months now?

The second most popular plant were our artichokes. I had tons of questions about them, like “why did you take them out?” (I didn’t, we just cut them back), “are they not edible, because you left them out there to bloom?” (they’re edible, we just had so many, plus I like the blooms), and “why did that one over there die?” (it didn’t, just the flower stalks died back, but if you look at the base, there are new leaves sprouting). The best comments I received were the five our so folks in our neighborhood that said “You inspired us to grow artichokes….” or even better were the ones that said “…in our front yard!”. For those of you who took the time to come and tell me that, thank you! It means more to me than you’ll know!

Continuing on with the popular plants, my zinnia plants also gathered crowds. The Zinnia elegans ‘Zowie’ pictured above is a fun and funky plant purchase from Annie’s Annuals. If you only knew how hard it was to keep my daughter and her friends from picking all of them before the garden tour!

Another stunning plant that put on an awesome display for the garden tour was Leonotis leonurus, otherwise known as “Wild Dagga” or “Lion’s Tail”. I know for sure that Talini’s Nursery has them in stock right now because….well….I just bought mine like two days before the garden tour (haha! Yes, I will admit to several plant purchases the week of the tour!). This stunner will be blooming into winter for us.

Moving on to the garden décor, you can’t have a children’s garden without silly stuff. Most of the adults overlooked the random toys in the garden, but the kids on the tour ALWAYS found them. The little model windmill above was built by my husband many years ago, and King Kong has been hanging from this windmill since before I even met my husband. There’s usually a little Einstein figure hanging from it too, but I took him off before the tour because I wanted to be sure no one took him!

You might recognize these little aliens from the Toy Story movies (“The clawwwwwwwww!”). My daughter has 24 of these guys, and I think they’re all out in the front yard. As I tried to gather them all a few minutes before the tour started, Kristi stopped me, and convinced me to leave them out. Pretty sure none of the other homes on the garden tour had aliens.

Didn’t I say you’d recognize some of the décor from my Talini’s blog post? Yeah, I spent a lot of time there last week!

This cluster of plants is my attempt to have something actually grow under our large redwood tree. The containers in our backyard need to be plastic, since our 75 pound Labrador Retriever will stop at nothing to chase squirrels and cats along the fence and often knocks over my containers in the process. Using plastic containers at least avoids my containers breaking. Wish I could say the same for my plants!

Another fun item from Talini’s Nursery was this adorable giraffe sculpture. I borrowed her for the tour, and it almost brought me to tears to bring her back to the nursery after the tour. She’s gorgeous, and seemed to love all of the compliments she got from the tour visitors.

The night before the tour I hand painted a few wooden signs to hang on some of my plants. I used these signs to highlight the plants that I wanted people to notice, like the hops pictured above, or the pineapple guava plants that “just” look like shrubs right now but can put on a wonderful display of blooms and edible fruit.

I also swapped out our regular bird bath to put mine and my daughter’s recent (and uncompleted) art piece out. This leaf was our first try at making a leaf out of concrete. It was a bit ambitious for our first try as this was made with a giant gunnera leaf I got from my friend Rob in the Bay Area. My daughter and I are having creative differences on the color it should be, so it has already been repainted a handful of times. I think we’re getting close though! When it’s done I’ll put another post up on how we made it.

The hops arbor still contained the “Bread and Butter-flies” from my daughter’s Alice in Wonderland party.

Here’s how I fixed one of my “trouble” spots. A huge dip in the lawn where there once was a tree would have been a huge hazard for guests if I left it as is. With no time to fill in the hole and put new lawn in, I grabbed a couple of our galvanized tubs, and filled them with marigolds and spinach instead. This is my new definition for “pot hole”.

I was really happy to see a few of our visitors actually play Bocce Ball while they were here. Clearly we have fun here in our garden, it gets used to its fullest! I think my favorite moment of the day was seeing a few of our visitors playing hopscotch! I considered the day a success the moment I saw a few kids CRYING because the parents wanted to go to the next house. Hopefully those parents got a few clever and inexpensive ideas to get their family outdoors more!

As I take the mirror off the fence to put back in my dining room, I laugh at all of the little things that I did in my garden to get ready for the tour that most of the visitors overlooked (like this mirror! Haha!). I laugh at myself for getting myself in knots, I apologize profusely to my husband who I snapped at way too many times, and to my friends that told me I was crazy for being part of a garden tour: you were right.

Most of the time the hammock is a boat, with my daughter as the Captain….searching for land ahead. But today, after the last couple of weeks that we’ve had, this will just be a nice cozy spot for a nap! I may not have the magazine perfect garden, but I do have the garden that is perfect for me and my family.