Gates to 39 gardens will swing open to the public during garden tours in April. It’s a good time to get inspired.
WALKS AND TALKS
Meet Pima County master gardeners, who are specially trained as gardening educators, at their 18th annual tour April 1. Visits to the four west-side private gardens will include talks that help you copy what you see, as well as get some general gardening tips.
Gardening for Sauntering features four labyrinths on a 3-acre property. Native plants abound, including palo verde, saguaro, barrel, creosote and night-blooming cereus.
A loop path also ties together bridges over washes, a picnic area and benches. “We strive to have the feel of taking a walk in a desert park,” according to the official description written by homeowners Helen De Lara and Kermie Hodge.
Talks at their garden will address garden tool care, potted cactus and building a labyrinth.
The other stops are:
- A View with a Garden, a study on how different amounts of shade affect plants. Talks will focus on color in a cactus garden, shading plants and pollinators.
- Rocky Oasis, which uses natural land contours, retaining walls and planting beds to create spaces for enjoying seasonally blooming plants. The themes of the talks are orchids, rainwater harvesting and gabion walls.
- Enchanted Ironwood Enclave, which invites wildlife to the natural plants. Talks will cover wildflowers and gardening with desert critters.
- The Pima County Cooperative Extension’s 14 demonstration gardens that are tended by master gardeners and include containers, edibles, cacti, roses and wildflowers.
ART AND GARDENS
Pima County master gardeners also will play a role at the Green Valley Gardeners Spring Garden Tour April 8. They will be at each of the five stops to answer questions.
One of the landscapes demonstrates how to have a garden that doesn’t need any care while you’re gone over the summer.
While Matt and Dick Degen are in Wisconsin for six months, their Green Valley landscape of saguaro, prickly pear, barrel, agave and other low water-use plants thrive on their own. “We plant what we know can work, and it has,” Matt Degen says.
Only the bougainvillea gets drip irrigation while the couple is away, she says.
The couple plant colorful annuals to enjoy while they’re in town.
The other stops will showcase:
- Natural plants in a large desert landscape where plein-air artists will paint during the tour.
- A hillside landscape featuring garden art by the homeowner. A musician will perform.
- Large trees and container gardens, along with a desert tortoise habitat.
- A rock stream meandering among native plants and seasonal flowers.
An Art in the Park/Spring Fair at Desert Meadows Park will have plants, art and food for sale, plus music and a silent auction.
OUTSIDE AND IN
The Tucson Botanical Garden’s annual Ultimate Home and Garden Tour is nearly an all-day affair April 8.
It will start with brunch at the Botanical Garden. A guided tour then will take folks to six homes, ending with a cocktail reception in a Foothills home with city and mountain views.
Two or three of the stops will include a look in historic homes in the downtown neighborhoods of Armory Park and El Presidio.
Together, the gardens are a mix of pools and water features, shady outdoor living spaces, succulent collections, antique-decorated patios and water-harvesting systems.
EDIBLES AND LANDSCAPES
The far-east-side neighborhood of Rita Ranch has a wide variety of gardens and gardeners. Some of them will show off their labors on an Earth Day tour April 22.
Visitors will see edibles grown in raised beds, in the ground and in pots. Landscapes will include wildflowers, cacti and succulents.
Hardscapes like pools, fountains and patios will reveal inviting living spaces, says organizer Elizabeth Smith. Some stops also will have rainwater harvesting, composting and vermiculture systems.
Jim Christensen and Jim Cramer’s yard is a wildlife habitat certified by the National Wildlife Foundation. It’s full of native plants that are allowed to grow naturally to encourage critters to stop by for nesting, feeding and resting. Birdbaths and bird feeders attract lots of finches, orioles and cardinals, says Christiansen. A rock wall lets lizards hang out in safety.
