Calling all horticultural voyeurs… and you do know who you are. You like to peek into your neighbor’s yard and see how they’ve landscaped, what they are growing, what ideas you can glean. Good for you! The next two weekends are high time to tour the gardens of others and see what efforts you admire or ideas you can borrow.

One of my favorite garden tours is the Twin Cities Pond and Landscape Tour, which runs this weekend, July 12-13 (northern Twin Cities sites) and next weekend, July 19-20 (southern Twin Cities sites and Rochester) from 10 am-5 pm. In all, there are over 100 gardens to self-tour. Donations benefit the Children’s Cancer Research Fund. Some sites on the tour are especially impressive when lit at night (9-11 on Saturday evenings).

GreenGirls reader Theresa put in a plug for the the first public Hennepin County Master Gardeners’ Garden Tour, Saturday, July 12 from 9 am to 5 p.m. Featured gardens are tended by master gardeners themselves, so this is your chance to see how the experts do it and ask questions. Tickets and more information are available at the website.

If you like hostas (and even Jaime does now), you will want to know about the Bright Gardens for Fraser garden tour. Fraser is a non-profit serving people with special needs and this benefit features eight private gardens, including one fairy garden with miniature plants and an extensive hosta garden. Included in the ticket price is a hosta gardening class, taught by Tom Carlson, owner of HostasDirect.

Additional tours, including some free events, are listed in the garden events calendar.

Has your garden ever been part of a tour? What was it like? Have you gone on a tour and been inspired — either for better or worse? What would your dream garden tour include?

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 8:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.