Mother's Day Garden Tour II - Much Belated

Boy, oh boy, have I been slacking off.  Way back in May I posted some pictures from the Annual Mother's Day Garden Tour that supports an elementary school in East Sacramento.  I promised a follow-up and just never delivered.

What can I say?  Life has been busy both at my day job and after hours.  I've always thought that the cruel irony of garden blogging is that when you are doing the most gardening and would have the most to blog about you happen to have the least amount of time to blog.  

Since it's been nearly two months since I went on this tour, I'm just going to post these pictures and make a few comments.  I won't go into a great deal of depth and I trust that's okay.  I suspect most people just look at pictures on blogs anyway.  

With the delay in this post, I should have PhotoShopped this picture to read "Welcome Back to East Sacramento".

This shady garden was a gem.  I suspect the above chairs were planted just for the tour though.

My daughter is seen here in the red coat.  I gave her a small point and shoot
 camera and she took hundreds of pictures in the gardens.  

I have these same pots at home.  I totally know where they bought these.  I admire it when people can stick to one type of container.  I can't seem to achieve that level of restraint.  

If you hate mulch, you probably hate this garden.  I can't imagine the upkeep once the leaves fall.  But on this day, everything looked clean and crisp.

A Strawberry Tree was growing in the dappled shade.  I took this picture of the trunk because of the bark and also to remind myself of the lighting conditions.  After seeing this, it occurred to me that the three strawberry trees I have planted were all in full sun.  Two of them are dead now and one is at our old house.  It never seemed to take off for me though. 

More mulch and crisp lines.

Isn't this beautiful?  No?  Well, one of the things I like about garden tours is seeing the ways other people address problems.  On this tour I saw how people hung cafe lights and how they brought water to veggie beds (above) among other things.

Artwork done by the kids at the school

More artwork.

A simple brick pathway - easy and timeless.

2014 Mother's Day Garden Tour - Part I

I'm getting old.  That's what I realized when this past weekend we found ourselves asking if this was the 8th or 9th year we've gone on the East Sacramento Mother's Day Garden Tour.  It seems like just a year or two ago that we were traipsing around, wide-eyed and inspired by these gardens for the very first time.  Who'da thunk I'd be old enough to have started a tradition that is very nearly a decade long?

But enough of that.  Let's ignore getting older for a while and take a look at some pictures I took.

This first garden was amazing.  It provided me with an idea of what my garden could look like if I had lots and lots and lots of money and an artist's touch.  This house has a current market value in the neighborhood of $1.8 million so that should give you some idea of what I'm talking about.  Anyone want to fund my efforts to see if I can duplicate this?  No?

This wooden garage door is a piece of art by itself.

The pathway from the driveway into the backyard

This was one of maybe a half dozen fountains in the garden.  It was one of the first things we noticed when entering the garden.  There's nothing like the sound of water on a hot day.

Areas like this helped this garden not to feel like it was all about the hardscape.

A narrow pool in the foreground with the owner's art studio/guest
house in the background.

Amen to this, right?

It's not every day that I get to stand UNDERNEATH a Japanese maple.  I can only imagine how old this beauty is.

I loaned my daughter a small camera for the day.
She took more pictures than I did and kept herself entertained in the process.

The second garden on our tour was more modest and quite small.  It looked like the house was newly built and I guess that didn't leave a lot of room for the garden.

As you can see, this one bed dominated the entire landscape of the front yard.  But I like the retaining wall.

The pillows are a nice touch of civic pride.

I'm a sucker for fountains, river rock, and pavers.  But this still didn't work for me aesthetically.  

I was intrigued by this iron display but found it hard to capture with the camera especially
since the space was cramped and I was trying to be respectful of other people on the tour.

Another view of the iron work.  The wall on the right is part of the detached garage.

Given the newness of this garden, I can only assume that this Japanese maple
is one of the unnamed seedlings which generally grow faster and are much
cheaper to buy when they are this large.  Cultivar name or not, it's a nice tree.  

Our last garden for this post had it's fair share of charm.  Unfortunately, this house was on a corner lot and I didn't get a chance to see the front yard since the entrance to the garden was on the other side.

An old chandelier is given new life as whimsical plant container.

Another view.

Mason jars were painted blue and pink and hung from chairs.

 

There's no lawn and plenty of shade in this garden.  If it were my space, I'd want a little more room to
plant things, but it also seems like a nice place to entertain friends in the evening.

More pictures to come in the next few days.  Thanks for taking a looksie with me.

Annual Mother's Day Garden Tour Part IV

And so begins the fourth and final installment of the Mother's Day Garden Tour pictures.

The next house we visited had an arbor at the sidewalk and some lawn as pathways.

The gate to the backyard had some impressive heft to it.

I was told that everything planted in this yard was edible except for the lawn.

I'm always intrigued by the methods people use to edge their lawns and separate it from their beds.

I was with touring with an architect who didn't like this back porch/stair case at all.  I was enamored with it though.  I'd probably try growing several plants in pots along the way.  I'd love to see some cascading plants way up there.

Even the bunny is edible . . .

But that feast will be saved for another day, I guess.

The last house on the tour was a "white and grey" garden as far as the plantings were concerned but the pool really dominated the scene and the white and grey was more of an accent I thought.

I really liked this container.

And I appreciated some of these touches:

This bacopa planted window box will just look better and better as the summer progresses.

That's all for this year.  Thanks for coming along.

The Annual Mother's Day Garden Tour Part II

This is the second installment of the gardens we toured over Mother's Day weekend.

I don't like to be critical of other people's private gardens especially when they've been gracious enough to open them up to the public for a good cause.  So I'll just say that the next house we stopped at just wasn't my style.  As a result, I didn't take a lot of pictures but here are a few that I did snap:

There was a very small pathway between the home on the tour and the home next door.  They had decorated both sides of the dividing fence with mosaic tile work which was the theme of this garden.  There was mosaic everywhere.

I found this collection of plates and mugs a bit messy but oddly charming.

The picture below was taken from the other neighbor's side of the fence.

Just down the street from this house was another garden that was very much my style.

You enter the back garden through this awesome looking gate.

The owners' bonsai collection is on display to immediately to the left of the entryway into the garden.  It set the stage for the rest of the garden which feature quite a bit of bonsai and the garden delivered on the promise of attention to detail as you would expect from bonsai enthusiasts.

The gardeners here included several globes and maps in their decor.

I thought this was a nice way to say "Please don't climb the steps".

Another bonsai display.

The outdoor kitchen.  These are pretty common in Northern California as we have a pretty long outdoor season.  It's not uncommon to smell the evidence of a barbecue from March through early November.

This garden also had a covered fire place and one of the cleanest pond/water features I've ever seen.

I admired the straight lines and rock work that made up a good part of this garden.  It doubles as a seating area allowed the gardeners to pack their yard with plenty of plants while maintaining a clean and orderly overall appearance.  

More to follow in the coming days.  Thanks for reading.