By: Veronica Sliva
When I need to take a break from gardening (and who doesn’t from time to time?), I like to snoop into the gardens of others: garden tours.
Thanks to garden tours, there is no shortage of great ideas to incorporate into my own humble patch. There are different levels of garden tours. The “create-your-own” tours occur serendipitously. You might be out on a stroll and spy a flash of colour over a fence or around a garden gate, as you peer into the garden world of a stranger. Most gardeners don’t mind, but of course you risk being misunderstood.
Private garden
What I really love is going out on a bona fide garden tour. All over the country different groups organize garden tours as a way of raising funds for various causes -- typically there is a nominal cost (and worth every penny).
One of my favourites, the Toronto Botanical Garden’s annual “Through the Garden Gate” recently attracted thousands of visitors who oohed and aahed their way through 26 private gardens.
Leafy Glade in the Beach, Toronto
There are also tour programs that spread visits to local gardens throughout the season. A real bonus is that the homeowner is there to chat and answer questions. The Toronto Open Gardens scheme is fashioned after the National Gardens Scheme (NGS) in Britain. A $25 passport allows you unlimited visits or you can pay $4.00 per visit -- you can see a different garden practically every day of the week. Many garden clubs also offer annual tours of their members’ gardens, some for a small fee, and some just for the pleasuring of sharing. For those in Ontario, check here for a club near you.
Buffalo, NY
One upcoming garden tour I’m really excited about is happening this weekend, July 24th and 25th 2010 in Buffalo, New York. Not your average garden tour, the annual Garden Walk Buffalo, is the largest garden tour in the United States.
It is a free, self-guided tour of more than 350 Buffalo gardens with a hop-on, hop-off trolley along the route so you can avoid the hassle of parking. For fifteen years, Garden Walk Buffalo has been a destination for garden lovers throughout Western New York and Southern Ontario.
If you happen to have roped a non-gardening spouse into going (like mine), the Garden Walk neighbourhoods happen to have Buffalo’s most interesting and eclectic shopping and dining destinations, such as unique gift shops and boutiques, along with every ethnic food restaurant imaginable (it’s the food my husband is after).
Buffalo, NY
Then, there are what I call, garden destination vacations. My favourite kind of vacation. I recently returned from England, where in the course of a week, a group of like-minded “plantaholics” drooled over some of England’s finest gardens.
Beth Catto's garden, England
High Style at Hampton Court
A highlight was the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. Some would call it overdosing on gardens. I call it horticultural heaven.
Hampton Court Flower Show
My favourite International tour company for garden lovers is run by Donna Dawson of Icangarden.com and Gardeningtours.com.
Though England is considered by many to have the market cornered, Donna’s trips take you to places like Morocco, Thailand, India, Ecuador and Italy, just to prove that the world is filled with garden eye candy!
Exotic garden
Have you ever taken a garden destination vacation?
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