PORT ANGELES — Tickets are on sale now for the Master Gardener 27th annual Petals to Pathways Garden Tour.
Six home gardens will be showcased next Saturday, June 25. Two are in Port Angeles and four are located along state Highway 112 with views of the Strait of Juan De Fuca.
Petals & Pathways is a self-guided tour. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., ticket holders can use the map printed on the ticket to visit any or all the gardens in any order.
Tickets are $15 in advance at local vendors and $20 on the day of the tour. They can be purchased until the day of the tour at:
• Sequim: Over the Fence, Sunny Farms, The Co-op Farm and Garden.
• Port Angeles: Port Book and News, Swain’s General Store, Airport Garden Center, Fiddleheads Home & Garden.
• Joyce: Arts & Antiques.
• Forks: Forks Outfitters, Rusty Gate Nursery.
Online tickets can be purchased until Sunday at clallammgf.org.
The ticket has directions and descriptions of the gardens. All home gardens have been selected by Master Gardeners for parking, accessibility, diversity in design and creativity.
The gardens are named to reflect their highlights such as “Grandma’s Garden,” which is rich in family history, and the peacefulness of “Serenity in Four Seasons.”
All the gardens will have several Master Gardener volunteers to help with questions on plant identification.
Proceeds from the tour help to maintain the Woodcock Demonstration Garden in Sequim and numerous Master Gardener community services such as the Youth Enrichment Program (YEP) and free educational classes held at Woodcock Demonstration Gardens and in Port Angeles.
Here are Master Gardener descriptions of the gardens.
• Grandma’s Garden, in the middle of Port Angeles, was created by the family that originally owned Gross’s nursery in Port Angeles.
It demonstrates how a small yard can be transformed above ground with containers filled with color-unique annuals and perennials, hanging baskets and trees. The over 100 hanging baskets are grown each year from seed.
All brickwork in the front and backyard was done by hand by the homeowners.
The family handled many Fourth of July celebrations fireworks shows in Port Angeles. Some of the old firework mortars have been transformed into homemade containers and plant stands.
• At Serenity in Four Seasons, textural shrubs, perennials and a rain garden fill the front yard.
The artistic “Pebbles” gate welcomes guests into the side garden, with such plants as Cryptomerias, Hebes, Libertia grandiflora, and Podophyllum “Spotty Dotty.”
The back garden with its imposing large deck is situated in the center of the property connecting the “people space” to the gardens. Large glazed containers brimming with flowering plants adorn the sitting area. Agapanthus “Rotterdam,” Scheffleria, Leycestera formosa, and hundreds of seasonal bulbs build a palette creating a calm, peaceful setting.
The abundance of flowers and a fountain attract several bird species that visit daily. Along the other side of the yard is the food garden of raised beds filled with asparagus, strawberry, culinary herbs and vegetables. The vegetables and all the property have drip irrigation to conserve water usage.
The homeowners moved to Port Angeles in the summer of 2016, purchasing a new home with a property that was a blank slate. They view their gardens as a sanctuary and not a work project.
• A Place to Reflect is set among towering evergreens west of Port Angeles. The heart of the compact garden is a water feature sporting multiple cascades, dropping some 20-odd feet into a pond of about 80,000 gallons where colorful fish make a home. From the pond, water is recirculated to the top of the cascade.
The plantings incorporate a wide variety of annual and perennial flowering plants, specimens of evergreen and deciduous trees and native fruiting shrubs.
The owner’s home overlooks the garden from the east, and an adjacent covered patio and fire ring offer an area for outdoor dining and relaxation. Strategically placed boulders around the fire ring offer the chance to “pull up a rock and have a seat.”
The semi-rural location means that the visitor may spy local black-tail deer who offer free, if random, yet frequent, pruning services. Elk, bear and bald eagles are occasional visitors.
The pond provides ever-changing reflections of the surrounding trees, passing clouds and a shifting palette of colors as the flowers bloom, each in its turn.
• Woodland Oasis, a homestead established in 1906, has 20 acres with a small year-round stream that runs through the yard, pasture and an old orchard.
It has always been this third generation’s favorite place. There is pasture and an old orchard. Often, they wake to find a large herd of elk or deer in the field, with fawns playing tag or young bucks jousting.
The homeowners began their ongoing gardening project in 2003, creating several gardens throughout the yard, some big and some small.
The wooded area was overgrown so they cleared brush to create a walking trail along the creek past the old-growth cedar and through the alders.
The path extends to the heavier wooded area where you’ll see stumps from old-growth cedar that the family cut to build the house and barn. You can still see the old tractor and the implements used to the fields. Since being chosen as one of the gardens on the tour, the homeowners have added a few special features to make their garden extra fun.
• A Permaculture Garden offers garden visitors a different approach, with an area designated the “forest garden” featuring 13 fruit trees, berry bushes and hops managed by ducks, who keep the slug population in check.
In the adjacent chicken yard are chestnuts, filberts and a variety of elderberries. A medlar tree, an unusual fruit tree that dates from Roman times, grows there as well.
Patches of salmonberries, blackberries and wasabi have been planted to take advantage of swampy areas of the property. Vegetable gardens and greenhouses are placed in sunny locations. To overcome the challenges of our shorter growing season, the homeowners grow fig trees and grapes in one of the greenhouses and tomatoes and similar warmth-loving vegetables in another.
Among other highlights of this garden are the homeowners’ straw bale house, yurt and chicken coop, a pallet house, a cob oven, a bunny hutch, and a pole bean teepee.
• Fairnie Brae is Scottish for a ferny upland rising above the water’s edge. It sits on a sunny bluff overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The homeowners have owned the property since 2001 and love the sunny flat meadows, rich soil and expansive views — just what they wanted as they retired to become gardeners.
When designing the grounds, they strove to create a natural, open and aesthetically pleasing environment while integrating their desire for vegetable gardens, magical groves, park-like meadows and trails for wandering.
