Wouldn't it be great to spend a day looking at gardens that successfully use native plants, ask the owners or designers about the design and installation process, hear about what works in your area, learn what not to do, and see for yourself what that cute little 1-gallon plant can turn into?
And what if you could preview the gardens in advance, to figure out which ones might suggest answers to the questions you have, or which ones have flourishing groundcovers under trees you've been struggling to landscape?
You can do all of that, for free, as long as you're not doing anything else on Sunday, April 19, from 10 to 4. You must preregister at http://www.goingnativegardentour.org/. The tour fills up a couple weeks before the tour date, so do it now.
The fifty gardens in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties on this year's Going Native Garden Tour include two in Los Altos and four in Mountain View. One or two photos from each garden and a paragraph of garden highlights are also on the tour website. Additional information about the gardens will be available to preregistrants on April 6.
If you volunteer, you can spend more time in one garden for half a day and get invited to other gardens throughout the year.
A reasonable number of gardens to see in a day is six, which gives you time to linger and ask questions, and take a lunch break. You may be able to see a few more if you choose gardens that are located close to each other.
One of the most charming aspects of the Going Native Garden Tour is the wide range of types of gardens, all with enthusiastic gardeners eager to talk about them: designed and built by professionals or owners, large to small, showplaces to in-progress demonstration gardens, established to recently installed.
Here's what you can learn if you visit only the six local gardens on this year's slate.
© 2009 Tanya Kucak