The Garden Tour

This weekend my friends and I gathered together, formed a caravan, and enjoyed a favorite tradition: the Garden Tour. Armed with cameras and notepads, we tromp through the yards of patient gardeners, hoping to find inspiration and secrets for our own gardens back home. I usually return with both a zest to improve my own landscape and a nagging doubt that it will ever measure up to what I see there.

The garden locations are identified with ribbon-strewn signs. In previous tours, a strict schoolmarm-type of Club member would welcome us with exhortations to stay on the path and follow the signs please! She was very protective of her sister’s home. Along the way we encountered the owner, usually a lady of advanced years with rough hands. She would lovingly gesture towards particularly interesting specimens, interchangeably calling them by their common and botanical names, with the intimacy of friends who have known each other a long time.

But this year I noticed a change. At the first house, a gentleman stood unobtrusively nearby to assist with our questions. He and the homeowner were “partners” in the garden design. At the next house an effervescent lady with manicured nails and a chic outfit stood on the path. She pointed to the magnificent house addition, which had taken a year to complete. The garden had been installed in three months. She referred questions to the landscaper. I thought it was particularly gracious of him to refrain from offering a business card. Surely next year he would need to move on to a new project, leaving this one behind like a woman abandoned for a new trophy wife. Another garden was elegant, perfect, and institutional. It had no soul. There was no one around to comment on it. I guess the design team doesn’t work on weekends.

The highlight of our day was a home of enormous proportions. The Club member who greeted us giggled and admitted that she was unable to answer any actual gardening questions. “Isn’t that an awful lot of collagen in her lips?” my friend whispered as we strolled by. We are keen observers. The lady of the house was wearing flip-flops. She does not garden, but her husband does. We spent most of our time admiring the interior of the extraordinary home, which had been generously opened for our enjoyment. In it I was delighted to find the husband-gardener so that I could query him about the vegetable garden design. His polo shirt was embroidered with the words Duke Basketball. The stitching was in Carolina blue. Can I trust his advice?

Rain began with a vengeance and we decided to call it a day. As I pulled into my driveway, I noticed that the dogwood I received as a Mother’s Day gift some years ago was in full bloom and that the azaleas we’d moved several times were finally thriving in their beds. I looked around and realized I felt a sense of peace and contentment that was comforting. I was home. Maybe this was the best tour ever.