Down a Garden Path
Garden buffs can visit one, some or all of 35 private gardens open to the public for a special two-day spring tour.
“It’s a tour of real gardens by real people,†said Mary Lou Heard, owner of Heard’s Country Gardens in Westminster and originator of the April 20-21 event. “It’s an opportunity for people who love to garden, or are just thinking of gardening, to find out how doable gardening is.â€
The tour includes gardens throughout Orange County and La Verne, Riverside, Diamond Bar and Cerritos. It is a benefit for the Sheepfold of Tustin, a home for abused women and their children. Tour participants are asked to make a donation at each garden.
Last year, the one-day tour raised $6,700 for the Sheepfold, Heard said.
The gardens on tour exemplify a wide range of styles, from California natives and wildflowers to cottage gardens, rose gardens, perennials gardens and a few whimsical ones, such as a railroad garden. All have a common element--each garden has been planted and lovingly tended by the homeowner.
Linda Hayward, a floral and interior designer in Fullerton, toured 15 gardens in last year’s inaugural event.
“It was wonderful,†she said. “It was so much fun to see other gardens, and you could get a lot of great ideas while supporting a worthwhile cause.â€
Hayward was so impressed with the event that she decided to put her garden on the 1996 tour.
Situated on a historic street lined with jacaranda trees, Linda and George Hayward’s 1920s two-story stucco house features an unusual barrel-eaved, wave-course roof. It’s a perfect setting for the surrounding gardens and six patio areas that serve as garden rooms.
Hayward, who has been gardening 25 years, created an English cottage garden to harmonize with the house. More than 30 rosebushes, masses of delphiniums, foxgloves, Canterbury bells, columbines, lavenders, herbs and colorful annuals fill pots and landscape beds.
Garden decorations, colorful birdhouses, wrought-iron collectibles and a rabbit named Buns are landscape additions.
Sharon and Dean Lowe are opening their La Verne landscape for April 20 only. First-time participants, their garden showcases his hobby of model railroading and her passion for colorful gardening.
Five hundred feet of track enclose a 20-by-35-foot section of the backyard. Four train sets whistle and toot their way around a garden diorama depicting Depression-era Colorado, complete with hundreds of figurines and landscaped with miniature plants and bonsai trees, including dwarf olive, flowering plum, Pochokaido elm and New Zealand tea tree.
The Lowe garden is also a showplace of color, with pots, containers and landscape beds brimming with vivid annuals and perennials, most grown from seed. Gardening since the early 1970s, Sharon Lowe studied horticulture at local community colleges and has been experimenting with plants and designs ever since. For the past 15 years, she has worked at Armstrong Garden Center in Glendora.
She has amassed more than 250 pots and galvanized iron containers in groupings on patios and in landscape vignettes. Several years ago, the Lowes installed an extensive drip irrigation system that reduced the 15 weekly hours of plant maintenance to just a few.
“I’m a real drip-aholic,†she wryly commented. “It enables you to put plants anywhere.â€
Sharon Lowe also collects antique gardening tools, seed packets and country accessories, which lavishly decorate the Lowe residence, inside and out. Hanging color baskets strategically placed on vintage wooden ladders add startling visual interest to the back fence, lined with vivid yellow euryops shrubs.
Sharon Lowe grows 90% of her plants from seed because she so densely plants with perennials and roses that scattering seeds among the foundation plants causes less wear and tear on the plants’ roots than inserting plants, she explained.
“It also gives me a wider choice, like Flanders poppies, perennial sweet peas and Basket of Gold perennial alyssum,†she added.
Some of the gardens on the tour, such as Kathy Bunge’s Huntington Beach landscape, are small but densely planted. The Riverside residence of Eva Mayer contains an orchard, vegetable garden, berry plants and herb garden surrounded by an unusual twig fence.
Peter Lin’s garden in Diamond Bar showcases 100 heritage roses and 40 David Austin roses. Garden topiaries depicting Papa, Mama and Baby Bear highlight the Cerritos garden of Philip Harris. Jan Nave’s garden in Garden Grove has five raised beds, 13 fruit trees, berry plants and a rose and herb garden. She also has a collection of rare ferns, including dramatic staghorn ferns.
The homeowners will be present at each garden to share techniques and tips. Although children are welcome, it is requested that they be closely supervised so they stay out of flower beds and don’t pinch the plants.
Times for both days are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Lists of the gardens with brief descriptions and addresses are available at Heard’s Country Gardens, 14391 Edwards St., Westminster. Information: (714) 894-2444.
