Imagine spending 6 hours on a Sunday welcoming 460 strangers into your garden. That's what Melanie Cross did for the 2008 Going Native Garden Tour (GNGT). Her garden was the most-visited garden this year, as well as each year since the annual tour began in 2003.
“It is a poster garden for the tour because it has so many things going for it: a wide variety of native plants, a mature garden, natives well integrated into the landscape, well cared for by a well-informed and enthusiastic owner,” according to Arvind Kumar, publicity chair for the tour as well as for the Santa Clara Valley chapter of the California Native Plant Society. The annual GNGT, scheduled for April 19, 2009, is a free, self-guided tour of about 45 gardens in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Preregistration, which is mandatory, opens January 9 at the website gngt.org, and closes either a week before the tour or when the tour is full, whichever comes first. A week or two before the tour date, preregistrants are e-mailed information on how to download the list of gardens and a locator map.
A reasonable number of gardens to visit on the tour is about six, though if you plan ahead and don't dawdle you may be able to see as many as a dozen. As much as possible, gardens for the tour are selected in clusters to minimize driving. Last year, the Cross garden was the one closest to downtown Los Altos. Other area gardens included 4 in Mountain View, 2 in Portola Valley, 2 in Sunnyvale, and 4 others in Palo Alto, in addition to 2 public gardens in Palo Alto and the Woodside Library native garden.
If you have a garden with at least half native plants, you can submit your garden for the tour until January 15. The website also includes a virtual preview of the 2008 tour, links to other native tours in California, and a volunteer application. Volunteer perks include garden previews scheduled year-round and an invitation to the annual volunteer potluck in May, held at the Cross garden.
© 2008 Tanya Kucak