The Joys of Garden Tours

 Master Gardener Katrina Kirkeby brings in Master Gardeners of Orange County Program Coordinator Randy Musser and fellow MG Teena Spindler to discuss the joys of participating in as well as visiting garden tours. The spring tour season is about to begin in late April in Southern California and goes all the way to the end of June in places like the Pacific Northwest. Spend a day caravaning around your local area to take in the ambiance supplied by home gardeners just like you! Get inspired by the different styles and tastes along the way.  Our guests give you insights on preparing for a garden tour as well as the easy steps to make your garden a showcase.  Who knows, you might even want to offer your jewel of a garden and become a host, too! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

You are listening to KUCI eighty eight point nine FM and Irvine. The opinions expressed on this show do not necessarily represent those of the management of KUCI or the UC Board of Regents. For more information about the show, go to KUCI.org. This is in the garden show produced by UC Master Gardeners of Orange County, California. I am Katrina Kirkabee, Master Gardener Host for the Hour. This week's topic is going to be so much fun. I am so lucky. I get to interview my co-host Tina Spindler and my fellow Master Gardener Randy Musser. And today we're going to be talking about garden tours. And it's the time of the year for garden tours, and both Tina and Randy are smiling right now. And both of them happen to have homes on the garden tour. Tina's doing the Mary Lou Heard Tour. And Randy is doing the Floral Park Open Garden Tour. And Tina, tell us, you know, where do we get going here? I see Tina smiling. Tell us a little bit about the Mary Lou Heard Tour.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Well, what is it? Garden tours just in general. Tis the season, as you said, for garden tours right now. And it's a great time to take a look. And you'll be discussing, I think, earlier for our listeners what some of their options are for garden tour season. But this year I'm on the Mary Lou Heard Garden Tour, which is an amazing tour. And it's actually one of my favorites that I've been going to for, gosh, probably a couple decades. And the beauty of this one is that there are homes all over Orange County. There are 36 homes that are on this garden tour. And so it's not so much a tour per se where there's a set number of homes, and you go from home A to home B to home C. It's basically just 36 wonderful people throughout the county that have agreed to open up their gardens on two days. And it's up to you to take a look online at all the different homes that are participating and decide which ones you want to go to. And what's the beauty of that is, is I've usually chosen, you know, because we often don't have a whole day to devote to this. So in years past, I look and see which ones are close to my home or cluster together in an area that I find interesting, or perhaps they have a yard that has a certain type of feature, native plants or something, or edibles. And so then, you know, if I only have time to do two gardens, I can do two gardens. If I only have, if I want to spend the whole day and recruit friends, one year my garden club did it, and and we went to a half a dozen and had a one out to lunch after. So it's something that's super, super flexible. The other thing that's great about it is it's free, but it is a fundraiser for Sheepfold, which is a women's shelter organization, and it is completely optional whether you donate or how much you donate. There are uh donation buckets basically at every home, and you can put a check, you know, for one donation in the bucket of one home, or if you want to drop five bucks in each home's bucket that you visit, you can do that. It's a you know a nice little fundraiser, but it is mostly a great opportunity for folks who live in Orange County or outside of Orange County to see real gardens by real people. These are just regular people.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

And they're regular people. And I've been to it a few times, and what I really liked is the diversity of homes. And there's a lot of different if and they have a description on the internet, don't they, of all what what the different homes are about and what their yards look like.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah, each each home has a little photograph and a description of what that garden consists of. Uh the descriptions are written by the the homeowners, so they they choose what they want to highlight and what's special about their garden. And and as an attendee, you just look at the ones that are interesting and pick the ones you want.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

It's a lot of fun. And also today we have Randy here, and Randy's a fellow master gardener, and his neighborhood has a tour.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

That's right. We it's our West Floral Park and Jack Fisher Park Open Garden Day tour. It's a little there is another tour called the Floral Park Home and Garden Tour that is really well known, and it's not the same. Our tour is focused on the gardens, and they're just gardens of neighbors who decided to do this. It was just a group of people in the neighborhood got together and decided that they had some really special gardens to share with other people and they wanted to do a tour. So, ten years later, it's a pretty sophisticated and fun event. It's a community event, not just the tours, but we also have a central place where we have a garden bazaar with garden-related vendors. We have some information booths that come just for the information. It's like Master Gardeners will have a booth there. We also have some vintage cars on display. There'll be food trucks. It's a really fun event that I just love being involved with. My house was on the tour, or my garden was on the tour last year, and it was a really good experience, and it really made me realize how things in my garden are really special. Like Tina was just mentioning that the homeowners on the Mary Lou herd write their description. I was kind of intimidated last year when I started to write my description of my garden, but when I did it, I realized, oh yeah, there was this historical reference to Hawaii in this garden. And it was just a fun way of kind of appreciating my garden from somebody else's perspective.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

And what area is it located in?

SPEAKER_02 5:43

It's in North Santa Ana. North Santa Ana is this wonderful area with these older homes. Well, much of it is older homes that are on bigger lots compared to these days. All the homes are different. It's not uh we have a neighborhood association that puts this together, but it's not the homeowners association as in a a um a neighborhood as in other places. It's just all totally volunteer group of people that get together and do this event. And North Santa Ana, West Floral Park, and Jack Fisher Park are neighborhoods that are kind of south of the 22 and west of the five freeway. It's a great location.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

And all are these houses that you could walk from one house to another, or do you need to get in your car and drive around?

SPEAKER_02 6:27

No, that's that's one of the things that's really nice, I think, about our tour is rather than being all over the county, which is nice because you get to see other areas and explore neighborhoods like North Santa Ana that you would never maybe get to. In our area, it's all a central garden tour where you can walk pretty much ever from every home to every other home on the tour. We also have a, this year is a new thing, we have a sidewalk tour that we're it's the back in the gardens that are on the tour, it's the backyards that are the showcase, right? You can see everybody's back front yard with for free. But on our tour, we opened the backyards, but we also wanted to showcase some of the front yards in our neighborhood who have converted their lawns into waterwise landscapes. So we have this sidewalk tour that's kind of an addition to our regular tour, so you can see some of those interesting things people have done with their front yard.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

So you get two for the two for one, so to speak.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Kind of, yeah. Well, there's a lot going on. We have also one of the main things that we're really proud of is we offer speakers because we're in a central location. You can walk from garden to garden, you can stop in at the garden bazaar, which is centrally located, and hear a speaker there. We we try to sprinkle some of the speakers into the yards. Like, for example, this year we're going to have a master gardener, one of our fellow master gardeners, talk about chickens and how to get started with chickens in the front yard of a house that has chickens in the backyard. So it's kind of a nice way to integrate the garden tour with the speakers.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

How exciting. It's going to be a lot of fun, Randy.

SPEAKER_02 8:03

I think so.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

And what are the hours?

SPEAKER_02 8:05

It's from 10 to 4, and tickets are available online right now on opengardenday.com. And it's also tickets are also available at the on the day of the event.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Wonderful. I know we're going to find out more about both of these. And how long have you done this before?

SPEAKER_01 8:26

I have done this before. I was actually asked to be on the Sherman Gardens Garden Tour, which is a lovely tour if people are looking for another great tour to go on. The Sherman Gardens Tour is also lovely. And Sherman Gardens, if if our listeners don't know, is a public garden in Corona del Mar. And so they do their tour as a fundraiser to support their gardens in Corona del Mar. And it's an annual thing, and it's been going on for years. I've I've gone to it as well, being a garden tour junkie. They typically had uh always had homes that were right along the coast, you know, in Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach area. Um, and I live in in the hills of Irvine, but one of the ladies who was involved as a volunteer at Sherman Gardens had been to my home, had seen my garden, and so she said, you know, hey, would you consider being on the Sherman Gardens Garden Tour? And said, Sure. But my first introduction was actually through Master Gardeners, because Katrina, as you know, every few years Master Gardeners have their own garden tour, which is not open to the public yet, but maybe we'll get there someday. Um, but we just do it for our fellow Master Gardeners. And so that was my initial introduction to the garden tour uh business. How many times have you been on the Master Gardener Tour? I've been on the Master Gardener Tour twice. Uh and and that's great fun. But you know, talk about intimidating to have potentially 300 of your good friends, but also, you know, garden experts coming through your through your yard. It was a tad a tad timidating first time around. So it was good that that was my first one because after that it was like, yeah, you know, sure.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Did you ever hear what happened to me with the Master Gardener Gardener tour? No, I was a brand, I hadn't even graduated from Master Gardeners, and I went to volunteer. And I thought, oh, being a docent at somebody's home sounds really nice. So I went over to this table that they were interviewing when as you go through the class. They have a lot of different venues you can go check out. And the person there said, Well, tell me about your yard. And I said, Oh, it's it's a kind of a big yard and smaller house, big yard. It's on almost an acre and a half. And she said, Really? Tell me more. And I don't know what happened, but the first year I was a Master Gardener, I was on the tour. The child might hire talking about intended.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

But your your yard's amazing, so I'm sure it was fun.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

It was fun, but it was just like you said, it was just, and I was like, oh my goodness, what did I get myself into? I wanted to volunteer four hours at somebody else's home, and I ended up having 300 people in the home. How did we do this?

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Well, the the first time I I did it, it was a little intimidating. But then actually, when the day of, as I'm sure you experienced, it's just so much fun because you have all these people who, whether it's the Master Gardener Garden Tour or Sherman Gardens or Mary Lou Heard or whatever, you have all of these people coming who love gardens and gardening, and you just feel like you're with family because everyone is just so um easy to relate to, and it just ends up being a really fun day, even though the weeks leading up to it may be a lot of work.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

And that's one of the we started talking before the show about being on a tour. And I think that for me last year, being having my garden on the tour, it was so wonderful to get all this positive feedback about your garden. And this year, in recruiting our neighbors in our neighborhood to participate and open their yard, it's been so nice to be able to tell them it's not about having the perfect yard. It's not a Sunset Magazine spread or something. It's just your yard and everything in your yard is interesting to somebody else. And it's really nice to see that you also have this beautiful yard and this pile of tools in the corner. It's all the little stories about your yard, like when I was writing my description of my garden, remembering that it was based on a Hawaiian garden in the 60s when it was originally built. Those things are really things that people really get into. And, you know, it's nice to see that other people have the pile of tools, it's and they won't notice the weed here or the weed there, or the plant that's not in peak condition. I had one of the people that helps to actually the head of our committee, who is this wonderful person, Donna Lane, she came to our garden, saw the garden, wanted to have it on the tour, later was talking about the the group of gardens that we had, and said that, well, we don't have any pools in the garden tour. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, we have a huge pool in our backyard. It's an old vintage pool. And it was funny, really funny for me to have Donna overlook the fact that we had a pool in our backyard, and it made me realize people are gonna see what they're interested in, and there's so much that people get interested in in people's yards that you know they're gonna overlook the things that they don't interest them, like a weed or a pool. A pool.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Yeah, a large pool.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

It was a little funny to have Donna's They weren't focused on the pool.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

No, no. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

But they also then the other thing, I mean, of course, not everybody's gonna have their garden on a tour, but it's so fun to go to these garden tours and see that's I think why we like garden tours. I know I've been on a lot myself. It gives you the ideas of what you can do.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

And that's a really good point, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Yeah, it really inspires you to want to get involved in your yard more, and maybe you see a beautiful waterwise garden and you never knew you could have a waterwise garden without just a bunch of cactuses and rocks, right? I think that for a lot of people it's just a really good thing to get a bunch of ideas. I know our tour this year, we have a couple homes or at least one home that it's like a young couple that are on a budget, that have been doing something with their yard, with you know, it's not like it's been there for years and years and years. It's not like they've thrown a bunch of money at it or anything like that. They they've still got this great yard, and it gives people ideas about what they can also do with a budget, a yard on the budget.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

You know, we've talked about that before, and if for great ideas before you go into your own yard, go look at other people's yard.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Oh my gosh, it's it's probably the main reason I I go to garden tours, even after, you know, being a lifelong gardener, is every single tour that you go on, you will discover something unique, something that you want to try out yourself. Or alternatively, you'll just be inspired to come back to your own garden and put a little more time and effort into it.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

It gives you a lot I I notice when I go out, it's like I didn't know you could do that. Or that's really simple to do, and that's I I I can do that, or I never noticed that plant before, or I was thinking about that plant and I thought it was only one foot by one foot, but in this yard it's now four feet by four feet. It won't work in my yard. Yeah. Yeah. Just totally motivating.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

That's an important thing. I have been on the California Native Plant Society garden tour also, and I did that when I was just starting to learn about California native plants. I'm from Washington State, so when I moved down here, it was a completely different situation. Like the idea that we can grow vegetables all year round was crazy for me. And to go on the California Native Plant Tour and see garden or native plants in people's gardens doing what they do in your a garden instead of just in a one-gallon pot, that was really helpful for me. And there's so many times I see, oh look, that's what that plant looks like, if native or not, that's what that plant looks like when it gets bigger.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

So you know, you mentioned the native um Native Plant Society's garden tour. So if our listeners want to know about that, they can go Google that. And that is another great place to learn about I'm thinking about changing my garden over, what will it really look like? And you could go check out those homes. Randy, you've been on it. Could you tell us a little bit about it?

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Well, the best thing about it's another one where they give you the map of different homes around Orange County, and you go from house to house and pick the ones that are someplace nearby or something. And that was the best thing about it was to be able to say, oh, look, this is what a toy on looks like after it's been growing for a while. Toyons are really big plants, and you and you don't really know, like for native plants, you always see the pretty picture. I always like to see plants when they're especially needing to know about native plants because people think that they're weedy and that sort of thing. Uh it's not necessarily the case that they look they're weedy. It's just that sometimes they have downtimes when uh and it's nice to see plants w in their different stages throughout the year. Of course, the time of the garden tours is a really nice time for for many plants, but it's just important to be able to visualize what that plant's gonna look like, besides in that little tiny picture. You know, you see a beautiful picture of a a toy on or something else. You you don't really know how the scale is, you don't really know what it looks like up close, and so the Native Plant Society tour is just a really nice opportunity to go and see established gardens or even getting started gardens. Like in my home, we have a poppy field in the front yard. We redid our home, we re- we destroyed the landscape, we didn't worry about the old landscape because we knew we were going to redo it after the house. Well, we've never really got around to putting in a lawn. We have a space for a lawn, but we never got to that part of the plan. And now, of course, with the drought, we're like, well, let's just hold off on the lawn for a while. And right now we have these poppies that have just grown up, and now we have a big poppy field in our front yard.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

How lovely!

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Yeah, it's really beautiful. And people love it. It's so interesting too because your neighbors walking by, we have a lot of people that walk in our to bar in our neighborhood, so we get a lot of feedback from people just walking, and it's great to to get, you know, people love the poppies. Of course, they don't love them so much in July before we tear them out because they look really weedy, but at that point when they've kind of died down. But there's all these other plants that kind of take the stage after that. So anyway, the Native Plant Society, the California Native Plant Society Garden Tour is another one that I highly recommend.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

You know, that one is a great one, especially if you're thinking about native plants. And you can go and check out uh there's many, many houses on that tour, and again, it is on April 23rd. And it and the other things you'll be able to see about that is that you would see the habitat for birds and pollinators with the natives. You'll have a lot more a lot of life in your yard because this is what's uh you know, native to our area and which attracts the birds, the butterflies, and the different pollinators. And also we're always looking about low water usage. And that's another place to think about how can I save my water and get some ideas there. And it's uh that's actually beautiful. You know, it's it's a really pretty and it's uh gives you a whole different sense of what Southern California could look like and how you can have a beautiful yard and have it native and use low water.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

Yeah, and it doesn't have to all be one it doesn't have to you know I know when I started I it kind of you hear people that are all about native plant yards and it seems like you have to do it all at once and your whole yard has to go from being a thirsty yard to a native plant yard or a waterwise yard. And you don't have to do it all at once, you can do pieces. We have in my yard, we have a lot of the old junipers that have been there for sixty years, and we just cut them back a lot and made space for other plants, they're established plants, so they don't need as much water as maybe we are used to giving them. And then the new plants uh could use uh I mean they need a little bit more water than they ultimately they need a little bit more water at the beginning to get established when they're baby plants, but then after a while you can kind of reduce the water and get back to the water-wise thing. And with the old established shrubs, they can kind of blend into that whole thing. They don't need as much water as we constantly drown them with sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

You know, Randy, that's a really good point. Um, it's it's one of the things that I've done in in my yard. And the other thing I think that people fail to realize is that because you decide to be water efficient, it doesn't mean that you can't have some of your old favorite plants. Like, you know, if if you love roses, it doesn't mean that you have to rip out every rose. It doesn't mean that you can't have a small, you know, flower bed, you know, that that uses a little more water than the rest of your yard. You just need to know that all of those different sections have to be on different watering stations, different irrigation stations, so that you can water them appropriately. Because you can't, you know, what give keep pansies alive if they're sitting next to a cactus. You know, they they aren't both going to want the same amount of water. Um, but I know it moving to where I live early on before the drought, uh, it was decided that these homes would be landscaped without lawns and that they would use a California friendly plant palette. And at first that kind of hurt my feelings because I'm a huge flower person, but they did not require in your immediate backyard that you did that sort of plant palette. It was just what you saw from the street and what what might might be on a slope or or adjacent to open space. And so I have, you know, these two nice perennial beds, which I still spend a little bit more water on. And I can still have, you know, roses and flowering perennials. But the front yard, the slope, and the side yards are all planted in California friendly plants. I think that's another thing for folks to see when they go on these garden tours is the strategies that people use to have and also edibles. I do have a a chunk of my yard planted in edibles, which of course can't be drought resistant because you wouldn't get any edibles. And so it that's another thing about garden tours is that you can look at these different strategies and say, oh, okay, I can still have this maybe not as much, but I can still you know have my pretty flowering plants that I can you know cut and bring inside.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

So you know Tina, your whole front your neighborhood, what's really interesting about your neighborhood is it is all a drought tolerant plant. It is lovely. The first time my husband drove up to it, he just went, oh my goodness, you know, he just couldn't believe the beauty and and and every yard after yard you had your own uniqueness in each yard. But the all the yards were drought tolerant and you could s you just dedicated the front yard to be drought tolerant and you took you could take that water that you saved in the front and use a little bit that on the back on your blooming flowers and on your vegetables. Sure. Yeah I could see where you've saved a lot in your front yard and your neighbors stay a lot in their front yard and you could have the best of both worlds. Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

And and I think that's a like I said if you're in a a you know traditional neighborhood that all had lawns in the front you might not realize that you know you can have kind of this split personality in your in your garden where you you do try to save a lot of water but you still have these smaller areas where you splurge and and you know grow veggies or or flowers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

I'm glad you brought up the edible thing because that's kind of one of the themes that we're pushing this year. We have one yard that I understand is edible in the front and the back. He's really into producing food with his water in his space. So we're really looking forward to having that garden in our tour. And also we reached out to some there's an organization called Orange County Food Access Network. They're going to be doing an information booth in our garden bazaar area and just this idea that we need to it's nice to have local food like how more how much more local can you get than gar gar growing it in your own yard and there's lots of ways to share food that you grow. I know I always have too much kale all at once and that sort of thing and I know our friend who's going to be doing the edible landscape he is involved with a group of people that get together every so often and share their food. And there's just it's nice to have if you're going to you have a lot if you're going to use water it's good to know what you want to use it on.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

And so we'll we're looking forward to showcasing his yard and then I'm going to be arranging a garden expert to talk about edible plants in the landscapes as part of our speech too oh I I love that topic and that's that's one of the things that that I do in my yard and that I've actually seen in other folks'yard when I've gone on garden tours you know why why not plant in your landscape you know what's supposed to be your decorative landscape why not plant citrus trees instead of trees that don't give you any fruit or I have a peach and an apricot that's right in the middle of my perennial beds but but they're beautiful you know they're decorative when they they just blossom they just finish blossoming and you know what what could be prettier than having this flowering tree in the middle of your perennial bed? It's it's quite lovely. So another reason to go on garden tours you get to see all of these strategies for incorporating edibles into your landscape.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Yeah I get a lot of comments when we're on the garden tour and just in general is that I incorporate my vegetables with some of my flowers. So people come up and go, what is that? I said it's a cauliflower but it might be right next to the roses and it's it's fun doing that and you get ideas and we didn't think about doing that for a long time and why not have that right outside your front door and when you go on these tours people are really creative really creative and the beautiful orange trees and citrus trees and peach trees and apricot trees that are in their yard it's like why can't I do that?

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Well I think vegetables I'm not really necessarily a gardener that focuses on flowers at all. I'm more about structure and color of foliage. So one of my favorite things to have in my I keep it in my garden my vegetable garden but my one of my favorite things is my broccoli because it's got this blue cast to the leaves and actually we have a lot of other plants uh we have a native plant called uh Canyon Prince it's a um a wild rye variety that has the same blue cast and we're all the the those blue things in their yard we're we're doing that in on purpose because it kind of matches the blue of the pool. And but just the fact that you can use different parts of a or you can you can capitalize on the beautiful blue foliage of a broccoli plant people don't know that that's something you can do and I think more people should should realize that and take advantage of vegetables.

SPEAKER_00 27:21

And you could go to yards like Randy's and realize the cup color combinations. Tina does the same thing. You keep your flowers in groups of color combinations.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Yeah I learned that the the hard way for many years I you know I I did a good job at growing things but it looked like someone had dropped you know a paint by number paint set you know in the garden. There was no rhyme or reason to it and so when I moved to this a house that had a larger yard I decided to be a little more focused on on colors and grouping and and making sure that they all looked complementary. But you can do it as Randy said with edibles as well as with flowers and why not have something to eat when you're investing the time and money in doing your garden.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Randy I have a couple questions for you. You're having um not only a garden tour where people are going from house to house and everybody gets to walk around your neighborhood and could uh first of all since we're on the radio for a while tell us the name of your garden tour again.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

It's Open Garden Day it's actually the Jack Fisher Park sorry the West Floral Park and Jackfisher Park Open Garden Day. It's been going on for 10 years. We have a website opengardenday.com tickets are available on there we'll be posting these garden experts the speakers that we're gonna have this year as they come in we have a garden bazaar where there can be vendors I'm not sure if we're gonna have the vendors online but it's gonna be people that are selling garden related products this year in particular we have uh I know we have people bringing or vendors bringing plants that are edible plants as well as perennials and other things.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

So they'll be sell is it mostly uh plants that are selling or will you be selling garden art or a garden related product so not just plants but a lot of other things. I'm not dialed into that I'm all so if you want to get your shopping done too you can come.

SPEAKER_02 29:13

That's right we are also gonna have food trucks we have some vintage cards on display I think I mentioned that earlier we also it's it's we're we're just the neighbors putting on an event so we also wanted to focus on having it a kid friendly tour also so if you have kids and you want to go on a tour you can our garden tour has a garden investigator guide that somebody puts together for kids and they could it has like two or three questions of to answer when you the kids are in the garden. I know in my garden there's a little mermaid someplace and so if I was giving uh kids a thing to investigate in our yard I'd ask where the mermaid was and see if the kids could find it and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Great so in your pro in your garden you make it for it's enjoyable for the adults on one level and the kids on the other so you can keep the kids occupied while the parents check stuff out.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Well that's that's true. I mean I think just when the neighbor kids come over to our yard they think it's so much fun because there's all these new places to explore and all these little paths to go on and so again I think people find different things about your garden that are is just really interesting to them. You don't have to do anything special with your garden if you're going to be on a tour. You just need to you know clean it up a little bit and show people and tell the stories about your yard.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

And Reddit how did you get involved in all this?

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Oh I because I'm in the neighborhood we have these great neighborhood associations that do volunteer social things our one of our neighborhoods does a wine walk every year and our neighborhood has a little Fourth of July parade that happens the the the fire truck shows up and people just follow it with you know costumes on or on their bike or whatever. And so our neighborhood having these little events I just kind of got involved there was a committee that said hey can you help out with a garden tour and I thought sure I'm a master gardener. I'm sure I can get the master gardeners involved and now I help them with all kinds of speakers and all kinds of information booths to add to the their little central area called the garden bazaar.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

And you're also going to have are you going to have a master gardener gardener there to answer questions?

SPEAKER_02 31:24

Oh yes we're gonna have a master gardener booth for questions there and uh at least at least one of our speakers is a master gardener. I'm also going to probably add another master gardener's speaker into the mix this year too.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

So if people had questions about their own yard you can not only come and look at beautiful yards in your neighborhood and have activities for kids to do while they're doing it but if they have questions there will be a master garden there they can answer.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Not in every yard but in the in the booth there somewhere centrally located exactly where they can come and ask questions and will the Master Gardener be there all day?

SPEAKER_02 32:00

Oh yes we're gonna have a mass master gardener's there at the in in a booth in the garden bazaar area from four ten to four all day.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Oh great so if you have questions in your yard or you have a leaf that has a critter on it, put it in a Ziploc baggie and bring it along or you want to know how to apply fertilizer or what not to do or something to do you could bring your questions along with you. Sure, of course.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

And you also have chickens yes one of our master gardener friends is going to do a talk on getting started with chickens this was an it's really fun to do this garden tour because it's just a bunch of neighbors with their ideas. So I at the beginning of the year I said okay everybody what do you want to hear about as far as speakers go and one of the the one of the people in the neighborhood has chickens and they're just getting started and they were saying you know I would really like to hear a speaker talk about getting started with chickens and I was like well I'm a master gardener and I know our our friend who does who's the expert on chickens so I talked to her and she's going to bring her girls.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Now I happen to know this master gardener also I think we all do her name's Terry and Terry loves her chickens and she loves turning people onto chickens so if you had questions about should I have chickens shouldn't I have chickens and what's the pros and cons she will be able to answer if she could tell you how much time it takes for taking care of the love and nurturing and care of chickens. And not everybody's in the right place for chickens and if you come and talk to her you might find out well maybe it's not right for me or maybe it's a perfect family event. You're offering a lot over there.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Right I should point out Terry's not going to be there the whole time to answer questions but she is going to be a speaker. I'm not quite sure about the timing yet but definitely check online with theopengardenday.com and then of course at the tour we'll be posting the times of all the different speakers for the day.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Wow exciting and Tina I you've been doing you you've been in the world of garden tours forever. When you first started preparing for the garden tour what do you do to prepare for a garden tour? Where do you start? When do you start?

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Well um you you can kill yourself getting ready for a garden tour if you want to but now having been through about six of them um and and also getting uh my garden's been used for um some shoots garden gardening advertisement kind of shoots and stuff so so I now know that um I overdid it at first to you you don't need as Randy can attest to you you don't need to completely redo your yard you don't need to have every flower every shrub every vegetable completely manicured but I will give our listeners some tips because one of the things that I've learned from going on garden tours is how to make your garden look good with somewhat of a minimal effort. And the reason that all of our listeners might want to know this is because aren't we all probably going to have some sort of event in our home this spring? Maybe you've got kids graduating from high school or college maybe you're throwing a baby shower or wedding shower or or heaven forbid actually hosting a wedding in your backyard you know so so here's here's what I do now. I mean obviously you want to do the best that you can to have your yard looking fabulous but there's a couple of simple tips that that you can do and the first thing that I do about two months before and Randy you probably did the same thing you you walk out into your yard and you just look at it and you just say okay that you know those shrubs need to be trimmed that citrus tree has some dead wood in it that needs to be cut out and you just look for the real obvious stuff and you do it yourself or you work with your gardener to get that obvious stuff done. And then the next thing that I do is I I think about the timing of the garden tour. I'm like okay what is likely to be in bloom that I've got okay well the roses will be in bloom or they will already have I mean one year I was on a garden tour in May and the first flush of bloom of the roses was in April and so in May they're resting before they start blooming again and so I was pretty sure I wasn't going to have much in the way of roses. So instead I thought okay I can get a couple flats of color right just simple color and I can just fill pop that in you know around the rose bushes and they're just six packs you know they're easy to put in the ground you don't have to dig up a whole bed or anything. So I'll just do that to add a little color around the edges in case the roses and the other stuff isn't blooming. And then the final thing well two two final things that I do four weeks before the garden tour or your event if you're having an event is now I don't generally use a lot of synthetic fertilizer in my yard but in the case of garden tours or an event I make an exception and I get you know one of those liquid feed types of fertilizer synthetic fertilizers and about four weeks before I fertilize everything with that liquid fertilizer. And the reason that I do that is it's fast acting and if you time it right about four weeks before you can be pretty sure that anything that might be blooming will be blooming at that point in time. I don't use it on any of the edibles because I like to stay personally I like to stay organic on anything I eat. But if you do want to make sure that you know your roses have all of the nutrients that they need to give you a little flush of bloom and your other flowering plants you know that's that's a a little cheater's trick. And then the final thing that I do uh uh just a couple weeks before uh a week or two before is I mulch the entire yard if you don't mulch um you a you should and as master gardeners we always encourage people to mulch because it a suppresses weeds which is my favorite thing um but it also conserves water it also regulates the soil temperature so you don't have your soil heating up and cooling down too much and then as it decomposes it has the benefit of fertilizing your plants slowly but the reason I mulch for a garden tour or an event is it's like dusting or vacuuming in your house. You get a completely nice covering over all of the bare soil in your yard. So it looks like everything even if you don't plant a single new thing if you just leave your existing shrubs and trees there and you just mulch around everything and cut off anything that's dead or pull out anything that's dead you'll be ready for whatever event you're gonna have. Mulch is amazing.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

This is a really tip for anybody doing anything I know in my yard I I've told people a lot of times like well this bed is all messy or something and I'd be like just put down some mulch you'll be shocked at how much better it looks and that's from personal experience I'm just like look at my beautiful yard now that I have mulch and it is so important for plant health and a variety of reasons but also it's these little things that you can do all the time that will make your yard make you feel better about your yard and be more proud of it. I just go we have some garden paths in our back in our garden area I'm sorry our vegetable garden area right now we have come we have these big kumquat trees and they're just full of kumquats way too many for me to eat and me for me to use but we also have parrots that are in the neighborhoods in Santa Ana and so the parrots come to our kumquat yard it's the same two parrots I think every year same time of year and they eat the seeds out of the kumquats not the kumquat itself and they throw the kumquats on the ground. So it just looks really messy for a long time but I found that just all I have to do is go out there and spend 15 minutes raking up the kumquats. I've got my garden paths it's just they're just dirt they're nothing special but they're so easy to to just run a rake down clean that up put it in the green waste or in the compost pile and it just makes me feel so much better. Even when we're just having a couple neighbors over for a glass of wine or something it's just a quick and easy thing that I've identified is the the thing that just really helps my garden look better. And so those two those tips about maybe just put in a little color here or there where you're not seeing anything in your yard at a certain time of year or even just the benefit of fertilizing. I'm not a big fertilizer I always forget I always put it off and the more I do it and I realize oh look how much better this plant looks the more sure it takes like a month before the plant is like taking advantage of the fertilizer but it every time I I do it and I realize the benefits I think I should be doing this you know spreading the organic fertilizer around regularly so that it's available for these plants throughout the growing season or the blooming season and it would be great if we did more of that.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

Yeah absolutely and I have I have one other uh hint and I don't know if you you do this when you're on garden tours or or other folks do but um I learned this one when uh my home was being used as a location for a a shoot for some garden related product commercials and that is the you know of course these folks are professionals right they they know how to stage things and so what they do is they bring that they asked me can we walk through your house and see if there's are things inside your house that we could use outside and I went yeah sure you know as long as it's not something you know like super breakable or whatever. And so they just went around the house and chose you know candlesticks and baskets and you know assorted different things even you know little small area rugs and they took those outside onto the patio and onto the patio furniture and accessorized the outside you know the barbecue area the I have a garden bench area the you know the patio and it was amazing you know my normal ordinary looking patio furniture all of a sudden literally became this beautiful room and it was all because they accessorized with a bunch of stuff that you usually would keep inside. But what a great idea for a party you know if you're having people over for dinner or say you're having you know a baby shower or heaven forbid a wedding if you think about decorating your outside like you decorate your inside you completely change the nature of your space and when you're on a garden tour holding an event you know all of a sudden it makes just a huge difference in what you're presenting people.

SPEAKER_02 42:51

Plus if you start to think about your yard as a place you would go and have an outdoor meal or have a glass of wine with a neighbor or something then you're gonna be enjoying it more. All that effort you're putting into weeding is going to pay off because you're gonna get to enjoy it. I know we have a little spot that's kind of a an hidden area in our yard where we put some garden furniture. And then we had these orchids that showed up in our lives. Somebody gave us some orchids before and these beautiful orchids and we thought well we want to take advantage of these beautiful orchids when they're doing their thing so we put them in the cocktail area we call it and it just made it another reason for us to go out there and enjoy our yard. Nowadays if the orchid is in bloom we make an effort to have people over to hang out in our yard. It's true it's true though we there's a few things in our yard that we think about as another reason to incent us to get people over to the house you know to to clean up a little bit and have people over or not even to worry too much about cleaning up it's those kinds Of things, you know, I have to have it all perfect, I have to have everything in bloom. Those can be you can make an excuse never to enjoy your yard if you worry about it too much.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

You know, I find that my yard will never be perfect.

SPEAKER_02 44:12

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

And I one time when I was on a garden tour, we had huge Santa Ana winds, and it actually uprooted my plants and drugged some of them. And I had this, oh, it was just like, oh God's messing with me, right? And it shredded one of these plants, and a master gardener came over and I'm like, I wanted to put signs on my next door neighbor's house saying garden tour here, or go buy some flowers and put them on my plants since my plants were stripped. But one of the master gardeners looked at this pathetic plant and said, Oh, I love that plant. It looked like a Charlie Blaum plant, you know. And and I said, But it looks horrible. And she says, But I know what it looks like, and I love that plant. And it just made me relax. And it's like they people understand, people who really garden understand there's no such thing as perfection. You can never hit perfection with your yard, and they understand.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

That's a good point. That goes back to my point about knowing what a native plant looks like, certain native plant looks like when it's not in season. People who are gardeners appreciate the whole wealth. Even one thing to think about when you're gardening is a dead flower can look really good. You know, it can be really sculptural and interesting. And you know, gardeners appreciate the whole range of beauty in a plant, I think. I know I do. I love, I love, like I said, I'm not a really flower guy. I kind of like the structure of plants and the color of their foliage more than I think about flowers. Flowers are a bonus to me.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

And Tina's about flowers. You know, Tina loves her flowers. I'm a hog. Oh flower flowers. There's brandies of the world and there's Tina's of the world. And what the nice thing is when you go on all these different garden tours, you'll find a garden that speaks to you.

SPEAKER_01 46:00

Yeah, you know, you're absolutely right. And and Randy's right about the structure because uh some of my favorite things I've seen on garden tours have been people who have taken their edible garden spaces. And we all know vegetables do not look uh great a hundred percent of the time. In fact, they probably only look great about a quarter of the time, and the rest of the time they're they're either starting to grow or they're waning, but they're still producing. Or you pulled them out. Or you pulled them out, and you go to the hole. But what I've seen on these garden tours, which has just been so inspiring, is people will build these raised beds out of materials, you know, say corrugated iron or um, you know, a combination of you know, uh construction materials, iron and and uh, you know, steel uh sides and you know, wooden posts or something. But they are in and of themselves with just nothing in them, bare soil. They're beautiful, you know, because they've invested the time and the money, and and these raised beds are gonna last for you know 15, 20 years. So they've decided to invest that money to create these beautiful structures that look good all of the time. Or even if they're simple raised wooden beds, they've used a a trellis or they've bought an obelisk that is, you know, a beautiful obelisk, and so that scrawly, sprawly tomato is being held up by this beautiful obelisk, and you don't mind the ugliness of the tomato plant, you know, that is that is past its prime. So that's the other thing that I love about going on these garden tours, is you can see ways to garden using structural things or permanent things or or color, you know, through painted gates or walls or garden art. And and so then what that has helped me do, because I now have incorporated a fair bit of little garden art in in the garden, is it's okay if you don't have things blooming all the time, which is a hard thing for me to say. But but it's okay if you if you learn to add structural things in your garden that always give you color if color is important to you, or or structure in in the term of architectural shapes, it you know, if that is or something unique.

SPEAKER_00 48:15

You know, that's this is a good thing to talk about. It's like I I go to gardens and I'll see things that are unique. You know, like sometimes somebody has a wheelbarrow full of flowers, or I've seen a telescope in somebody's yard that's up on a hill that could look for a long distance. And hammocks. You know, I've seen hammocks in yards, and it just makes me think, and I have a tree cut in half as a bridge. It's my walkway across my pond. And that's made people think about unique things that they can do. And until you go into these yards, sometimes you go, I've never thought about that. And that's something truly unique in that person's yard, and how maybe I I might put it something like that or incorporate it in my yard. Or maybe I wouldn't incorporate it, but I'm like, wow, that's really cool. I've never thought about it that way.

SPEAKER_01 49:05

We went on a tour um a few years ago, a number of years ago, to the Sonoma County Master Gardeners have a garden tour they put on, I think every other year. We went in one garden there and it was a small, small little garden. And in the backyard, it had this rather large tree that kind of took up the whole garden. And the people who lived there had hung different colored, you know, small wooden, old wooden chairs on that um tree painted in different colors so that they could have something to look at. And it was just, you know, so unique. And it it added color to the garden, but took your eye to a vertical space that you, you know, perhaps wouldn't have otherwise um, you know, looked at. And I thought, how clever, you know, here they have most of their yard in shade. They can't get a lot of color in their yard because it's mostly covered by this shade tree. So they opted to put their color up in the tree by painting these chairs all these different colors. So that's really interesting. It's these kinds of things that you get to see on garden floors that, you know, are very creative and and hopefully inspire you for your own yard.

SPEAKER_02 50:12

It's also there's so much special things. Not everybody's gonna be on a garden tour, but there's so much, it's not just about the plant, it's also about little ideas, all these different elements that are in the yard. Like, you know, if you have a big tree, don't hate the tree because it's causing shade. You know, really celebrate, really use that tree. And I want to get back to that structure point. I have the poppy field in my yard right now, it's looking really pretty right now. All the weeds are growing right now underneath the poppies. But in in July or or or sooner, maybe this year, they'll all look spent and weedy and the powdery white mildew will have gotten to them. There will be a time when I'm not really happy with the front yard, but then we're gonna wipe it all out, you know, go out there and dig up those weeds and take down those spent plants, and then it exposes the fact that we're this one border where the lawn might be someday. And it's shocking how many people think it looks so pretty, the yard. Even though there's no grass, there's just a big open space. The kids across the street think it's hilarious that we call it the non-lawn. And it's just this, you know, it's something that you you don't really appreciate until you kind of step away from it a little bit and start to realize that your yard is special no matter what. There's all these special little ill elements that on a garden tour you'll see in other people's yards, you get ideas in other people's yards, or if you happen to have your yard on a on a garden tour, you'll get all this feedback that you get so you appreciate your own yard too.

SPEAKER_00 51:41

God, this sounds good. Can you believe it's almost been an hour that we've been talking? Uh I want to give everybody a couple uh tell about a few garden tours that are going to be gone, and then I want you guys to just tell us a little bit about yours. The Native Plant Society has their native um their garden tour. So you can Google that, find out the information on that. And then Tina, I believe the Mary Lou Heard is coming up. And how would we find out a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 52:07

You can just go to the Mary Lou Heard Garden Tour website and it will actually have a list of all 36 gardens and a brief description so you can check out which ones you'd like to see.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

I would love to say something about that tour. That tour, I love that tour. That tour is incredible. It is really hard to do all 36 properties, but you could look where you live or you can look at and see what what calls you forth and find out a few homes that are on it. But I have learned a lot on that tour, and just it's spectacular what people can do and how much they show their love of their garden, and you can get a lot of really great ideas. And I would definitely check out Tina Spinland's house. She has Thanks, Katrina. Oh my goodness. I actually just going through her neighborhood is an educational experience. Just driving up to your house, if you want to learn about natives and how beautiful natives can look, even if you don't go in, and her house is spectacular, but just driving through the neighborhood and getting to her house, it's it's a class in and of itself.

SPEAKER_01 53:10

It does show you a way that California can landscape without using water hungry plants. And it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

I used to think that uh uh native plants and would it you you you look deprived and it's sad looking. But I've been through I've been to your house every month of the year, and the neighborhood is gorgeous.

SPEAKER_01 53:30

Yeah, and it and it is a mixture of natives and other what they call California friendly. California friendly. So, but they're they're all low, you know, relatively low water use. So yeah, it's a great, great way to get some ideas.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

Check that out. And then we have another garden tour that's coming up. It's the Tustin Garden Tour, and it's called the Promenade Home and Garden Tour. It's part of Old Town Tustan's um celebration, and they're celebrating the amaz it's an amazing community of heritage in Old Town Tuston, and it's their 20th annual home garden tour. You could Google that Tustin Garden Tour and it'll tell you all about it. Um there is a horse-drawn truck trolley, they have garden tours, they're doing uh vintage homes and gardens, uh, they're doing some performances there. So that'd be another one if you live live in the Tustin area. Also, if you're into roses, the Rose Society of Saddleback Mountain, it's a nonprofit American Rose Society affiliate, is sponsoring its 25th annual elegant enhancing garden tour. And you can Google that, and it I've heard it's beautiful. Have you seen been on that one, Tina? No, not on that one. But if you like roses, that might be a wonderful one to uh check out. It's the Rose Society of Saddleback Mountain, and you could also look at there the American Rose Society. It's a national nonprofit educational organization, and that should be pretty spectacular, also. And then we have Randy's tour. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_02 55:05

Well, let me give a shout-out to another tour that's in our area. It's called the Floral Park Home and Garden Tour. It's the focus traditionally has been on the homes, but they've added gardens in the last few years, I believe. And I mention it because it often gets confused with our tour, which is the West Floral Park and Jack Fisher Park Open Garden Day. The Open Garden Day, which is just gardens, not just gardens, it's a lot more than just gardens, but it's focused on gardens rather than gardens and homes. It's from 10 to 4. We have our website, brand new website, opengardenday.com. You can get tickets there, or you can get tickets of the day of the event. And we have a lot more involved in the gardens. Like I said, we have that sidewalk tour so focusing on water-wise landscapes. We have our garden expert speakers, we have our garden bazaar vendors with food trucks and vintage cars on display. It's a really fun one-day community event that's put on by a bunch of my neighbors. I'm just so proud to be involved in that. So that's Open Garden Day.

SPEAKER_01 56:06

Well, what I'd like to mention uh that wasn't on your list, also, is the Sherman Gardens garden tour, which is lovely.

SPEAKER_00 56:13

Wow, we have a lot of reasons to get people out. Whatever weekend it is, it seems to be something going on. So Google these saints, check them out. Sherman Sherman's Garden is another wonderful one. It's a fun way to spend the day. You get some great ideas, you feel great, and just have fun. And I want to thank Tina Spindler for being with us and Randy Musser for being with us. Thank you. My pleasure. Wish everybody happy gardening and enjoy your spring.