VAA Garden Tour 2012 - June 23-24

Garden Tour

Garden Tour

June 23-24, 10 am – 5 pm
Tickets $20 (thru May 31/then $25) available at VAA, Heron’s Nest, Vashon Bookshop, Kathy’s Corner and www.brownpapertickets.com

Spring is here and so is the 22nd Annual Vashon Island Garden Tour, one of Vashon Allied Arts’ biggest events of the year.

Weekend festivities begin with the Sunset Garden Gala, Friday, June 22, 6 pm until sunset in the private waterfront garden paradise of Hans and Cindy Koch. Enjoy cocktails, gourmet dinner catered by The Hardware Store Restaurant and live entertainment. Tickets are $125 per person and are limited. Call 463.5131 to reserve.

The Tour, slated for Saturday, June 23, and Sunday, June 24, offers gardeners of all persuasions the opportunity to experience five gorgeous outdoor Island sanctuaries. Explore five eclectic gardens with magical features to delight the senses. Surround yourself with the quiet energy of a healing garden sanctuary as you walk acres of sheltering woods. Metal sculpture, a pergola and leaf swing provide grace notes for this meditative refuge. Explore a woodland meadow filled with purple lupine, Himalayan birch, poplar and maples. Elegant boxwoods surround bluestone patios framing rhodies, davidii, hydrangeas and lilacs in this inviting landscape. Take in an intoxicating pond and waterfall; stroll gardens accented with sculptures, antique Indonesian garden shed and numerous unusual plants. Marvel how home and garden architecture meld with extended pergolas deconstructing into meadows to create a palette of texture and color. Lose yourself in an enchanting, fun-loving garden filled with wondrous exotic plants and garden art complete with chicken museum and palace stocked with outlandishly colored birds.

Tour tickets include expanded daily seminars. Learn how to select and install stonework with Jan Nielsen, long-time Islander and Marenakos Stone Project Manager. Melissa Schafer, Certified Professional Horticulturist and owner of Schafer Specialty Landscape & Design, will share secrets to fantastic container creations. Discover the unique process of distilling essential oils with the Lavender Sisters, handcrafters of fine organic lavender products from Island grown lavender.
Stroll the gardens, enjoy live music and pick up a piece of original garden art. And don’t miss Garden Art Market conveniently located on Vashon Hwy. on the K2 building lawn! Tour tickets, valid both days, are discounted until May 31; group rates available. We regret that all gardens may not be wheelchair accessible.

Included in your ticket price is an expanded offering of inspiring seminars (more info below) and live music in the gardens, discounts at local merchants and much more.

The Garden Art Marke, located on the front lawn of the K2 building off Vashon Hwy, will be open to the public and feature art to liven up outdoor spaces and other garden-themed products made by local artists. Bid on artistically embellished garden ewers and enter the raffle to win one of several fantastic garden-related items donated by local merchants.

Tour tickets are $20 per person through May 31, $25 after June 1. All Garden Tour proceeds benefit Vashon Allied Arts.

Special thanks to Garden Tour presenting sponsors: Puget Sound Energy, Thriftway, John L. Scott, Island Home Center & Lumber and JR Crawford
Planting Seeds Sponsors: The Hardware Store Restaurant, Palouse Winery, DIG Floral & Garden, Giraffe, Kathy’s Corner, Vashon Island Coffee Roasterie & Minglement, Country Store & Gardens and Colvos Creek Nursery.

Garden Talk Schedule:
Saturday
11am - Jan Nielsen in the Carhart garden
11am - David Pfeiffer
11am - Sylvia Soholt
Noon - Dave Hunter in the Pearson garden
Noon - Barry Foster
1pm - Melissa Schafer in the Soholt garden
1pm - Whit Carhart
2pm - Leda Langley in the Foster garden
3pm - David Pfeiffer

Sunday
11am - Jonathon Morse in the Carhart garden
11am - David Pfeiffer
11am - Lavender Sister in the Soholt garden
Noon - Sara Van Fleet in the Pearson garden
Noon - Tom Conway in the Foster garden
1pm - Sylvia Soholt
1pm - Whit Carhart
2pm - Barry Foster
3pm - David Pfeiffer

Garden Talk Descriptions:
Spring is bursting out all over, and this year’s Garden Tour offers more information than ever, thanks to seminar coordinator Melissa Schafer. Schafer Specialty Landscape & Design and certified professional horticulturist, she brings containers to life with structure, texture and color. Learn secrets to fantastic container creations, how to choose container styles, soil blends and plant combinations. “A single container in the landscape provides a focal element; grouping containers together, you can create a versatile landscape extension with a condensed pallet of texture and color.” Join Schafer Saturday, 1 pm, in the Soholt garden. One of her containers will be included in the raffle.

Dave Hunter of Hunter’s Mason Bees, Crown Bees’ website and mason bee product supplier, is working to change pollination methods for North America’s future orchards. Hunter partners with 500 gardeners (70 on Vashon) to raise mason bees to improve health of orchards, gardens and overall landscape. Hear more at the Pearson garden Saturday, noon.

Leda Langley is half of the husband/wife team behind Langley Fine Gardens, a wholesale nursery that specializes in unique and rare varieties of vegetables and annuals. Langley provides over 100 varieties of tomatoes, peppers and eggplants and custom salad greens to retail nurseries and regional farmers’ markets. Langley discusses “black” flowering varities including ‘Sooty’ dianthus, Scabiosa ‘Ace of Spades’ and ‘Watchman’ hollyhock. Other favorites include night-scented flowers, hummingbird attractors and rare Echium pinninana, a 12’ tall biennial from the Canary Islands. Langley talks Saturday, 2 pm, in the Foster/Fillinger garden. Plants may be purchased at Garden Art Market.

After years of urban living, blogger Tom Conway (www.tallcloverfarm.com) opted for country life. He moved to Vashon and settled on four acres of possibilities. “Gardening has always been a passion and constant in my life; there is joy to be found in the blossom and the leaf.” When Conway’s not making compost, plotting against Scotch broom and shooing deer, he’s blogging about gardening, cooking and his two bulldogs. “As a fan of big bossy flowers, I’m eager to share gardening tips for growing bodacious blossoms that can’t be ignored.” Conway introduces “Grande Dames” of the garden: lilies, peonies, dahlias and roses at the Foster/Fillinger garden Sunday, noon.

Jonathan Morse’s gardening interests were cultivated as a youth. “I’m living my dream; gardening on my family's land here on Vashon has given me the opportunity to express my creativity without limits.” He discusses where to seek inspiration for details to make the garden a work of art. Identifying and discussing design details, Morse leads Tour guests through Carhart’s garden Sunday, 11 am.
The Lavender Sisters; Merrilee Runyan, Dana Illo and Katy Jo Steward have collectively farmed lavender and handcrafted lavender products on Vashon for 13 years. They sell lavender bouquets, scented balms and lotions to wholesale florists, Puget Sound Metropolitan Markets and farmers’ markets. They share the distilling process used to create organic lavender products Sunday, 11 am, in the Soholt garden.
Surrounded by eight acres of river rock, quartzite, granite and basalt, Jan Nielsen, Project Manager for Marenakos Stone, understands stone as a versatile landscape design element used among plantings, as pathways, retaining walls and sculptural art. He discusses stone installations in the Carhart’s landscape and how to select and install stone for projects, Saturday, 11 am.

Designing gardens with wildlife in mind means incorporating plants and creating habitat to encourage a birds, pollinators and other animals. Passionate gardener and wildlife enthusiast Sara Van Fleet transformed her Vashon property into a wildlife oasis by providing attractive flowers and berries, protective habitat for nesting birds and animals and a thriving pond ecosystem. She explores components to create wildlife-friendly landscapes in the Pearson garden, Sunday, noon.

‘Gardening with Weeds’: Landscape Architect David Pfeiffer discusses the importance of why a thoughtfully organized and structured garden plan, along with proper plant choices, including ‘weeds,’ will enhance the beauty and still retain order and balance in your garden.
His own garden, a cultivated half-acre (of 15 acres) illustrates this philosophy. Designed with distinct rooms for lounging and dining, potager (fruit and vegetables), a formal fountain, perennials, grasses and topiary boxwood, the architecture of the garden and house is intimately connected in feel and function. Highly sophisticated, but sturdily agrarian. Pfeiffer will discuss how to incorporate these principles in your garden 11 am and 3 pm.

Garden hosts Sylvia Soholt, Barry Foster and Whit Carhart introduce visitors to their garden and share design inspiration and features that make their gardens unique. Hosts speak throughout both Tour days.

SEE YOU AT GARDEN TOUR! For more information, please call VAA at 206.463.5131.

 

 

 

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