I never really talked about the Bowmanville Fall Glory Garden Tour that I went on, did I?
My friend Sarah came down (on GO transit, no less) from Toronto for the day and although we got a late start and skipped some of the stops on the tour, we had a terrific time.
Our favourite garden was the one located just next to Strickland’s garden centre, just north of town. I suppose this means if you really want to find it, bad, you can now, but I do stress that the owners were very private people, and wouldn’t appreciate strangers at their home other than on the garden tour date. We felt that it really wasn’t fair for this garden to be among the first on the tour, because other gardeners would be hard pressed to compete. Granted, the tour wasn’t a competition, but this garden was so over-the-top fantastic, we couldn’t help but compare the others to it.
Sarah speaks to the home owner and gardener about this history of his garden.
There was a wide range of gardens, from the smaller, suburban back yard garden to the very large and spacious. There was a surprising lack of vegetable gardens on the tour, however, which I found disappointing, since my focus lately is primarily on growing food.
One of the gardens had a terrific display of a variety of amaranth that I hadn’t seen before, and gave me some good inspiration for filling in the holes in the perennial border.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about volunteering my garden for the tour, but I really don’t think it’s ready to be seen by the public, other than on this website. Here on the site I can choose to show you very specific little corners of my garden, those I think are most beautiful, or choose to highlight a problem I’ve been having and seek your advice. To open my garden gate to strangers would be opening it to critique and criticism and I think I’m a couple of years of being ready for that, yet. I do think it will be a lot of fun when the day comes, if it ever does. At this point I’m not even sure how to get involved in the tour. Perhaps being a vegetable gardener would be an advantage if I ever decide to join in.
If there are garden tours in your neighbourhood, I strongly suggest you take the tour. It’s a great way to meet other gardeners in your neighbourhood, and to get some inspiration for the next growing season. Lots of ideas are now whirling around my head for next year!
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I am with you, I would find the lack of vegetable gardens terribly disappointing. You never see much in the way of artistic vegetable gardening. People think (in my opinion) that vegetable gardening is somewhat less sophisticated than a arrangement of orchids. You just dig a hole in the ground, drop in the seeds and pick the fruit. Not so!
It is my opinion that vegetable gardening is MORE of a challenge, there are thousands of soil activities to do to make the garden produce the maximum. In addition, if an orchid dies, you just go out and buy another one. If all your tomatoes die, then you have to resort to tomatoes at Walmart or such. And I am of the opinion that Walmart strip-mines their tomatoes out of a coal pit somewhere in Texas.