We’re on a Garden Tour! We’re on a Garden Tour!

I’m pleased and honored to announce our home garden has landed a spot among the dozen selections for the 7th annual Noe Valley Garden Tour! Yaay!

Saturday, May 11th. 10am-4pm.

The NVGT is an annual event, featuring selected home gardens in (drumroll, please…) Noe Valley here in San Francisco. Given our location on 20th St, we’re technically in Eureka Valley, but our garden efforts were considered worthy of inclusion in this year’s tour. Awesome! The tour raises funds for public garden projects in the neighborhood, and this year’s beneficiary is the Noe Valley Public Library on Jersey Street, where some retaining-wall repair work is desperately needed.

The garden tour is a great way to celebrate Mothers’ Day weekend. Like I said, there will be twelve gardens open on the self-guided tour, in addition to several drive-by opportunities to see some amazing sidewalk gardens. Given that it’s a hilly neighborhood, with the gardens ranging between 20th and 30th Streets, and from Hoffman to Dolores, a shuttle bus will be making the rounds for those who don’t want to hoof it on their own. Our own garden is just half a block off the #24 bus line on Castro, and is easily accessible. Parking in the neighborhood on a Saturday is awful. If you find a good spot you’d do well to just stake it out and walk/shuttle/bus it from there. Or, move once or twice and group your visits accordingly. You have the whole day, and it’s great exercise.

There will be volunteers to guide you along the way (volunteering for two hours is a great way to get a free pass to see all the gardens), and I’ll personally be staking out a spot in our garden, to answer questions about the plants and talk shop all day. My friend and cohort Charmain Giuliani will be doing demonstrations in one of the gardens, too.

Ours is what I call a “jewel-box garden,” with various self-contained groupings and vignettes in a few different spots. As you enter, you step up through an alley of ferns, orchids, and bromeliads towards our bed of shrubs and conifers on a wall of cascading flowers. Then you’ll see our collection of specimen succulents and caudiciform plants, and climb brick steps past vines and shrubs, citrus, succulents, grasses, and sculpture as you ascend to the fern grotto at the top. An Australian tree fern arches over our collection of diminutive Japanese maples, camellia, clivia, and a multitude of ferns. On the large deck under the Victorian-era garden shed is room to take a seat in the shade of a grand cedar and enjoy our fuchsias, begonias, and palms, and get the best all-around view of the whole multi-tiered tableaux. As renters, we are especially proud of having created this garden in its entirety.

Tickets for the tour are just $15 ($12 for seniors). Visit the NVGT official page to buy tickets, volunteer, or get more info. You’ll get a map of the addresses after purchase.

Hope to see you here!