Mark calendar for SR garden tour

By ROSEMARY MCCREARY

FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

It may be a leftover idea from childhood that all good things begin in summer. Although this notion might apply to vacationing, it doesn’t necessarily pertain to gardening. By the time summer arrives, many plants have already reached their peak of bloom. Rather than erupting into the bedazzling scenes we find pictured in slick magazine photos, they spend summer months resting and producing seed. That scenario can be frustrating for the gardener who expects bountiful bloom in summer.

But gardens in every one of our many microclimates really can look glorious after June arrives. It’s a matter of selecting the right plants and managing the balancing act of placement, pruning, and culture.

How do you make this happen? It helps to seek advice and visit model gardens that are similar to our own. Thanks to the Sonoma County Master Gardeners, trained volunteers with the University of California Cooperative Extension, all of us have access to both options.

Gardening advice is available everyday from Master Gardeners at their help desks, 565-2608 or 938-0127, and on their informative Web site, groups.ucanr.org/sonomamg or sonomamastergardeners.org (click on Master Gardener). Here you’ll find two dozen printable documents along with articles on a wide range of topics from habitat gardening to grafting, from tomatoes to sudden oak death.

Even more enticing is the opportunity, on June 22, to tour six private Santa Rosa area gardens and see first-hand how Master Gardeners apply the principles and skills they’ve learned to their own home gardens. Their spaces are typical urban and suburban sites, some tucked between backyard fences, others more expansive in semi-rural sites; yet, all make use of up-to-date practices and principles that have evolved out of UC horticultural research.

There’s no doubt in any of these gardens that plants come first — the wide variety and numbers of species is proof enough — but all have achieved pleasing designs and compatibilitywith the advantages and limitations of their individual microclimates.

The most encouraging aspect of these demonstration gardens is that the individual homeowner has done the planning and planting, something that most backyard gardeners want to do themselves as a creative or leisure activity.

Several gardens belong to plant-a-holics, collectors who have developed a sense of restraint only in placing plants, not in acquiring them. One heavily shaded garden is organized into a series of charming “rooms” where the garden takes advantage of neighboring redwoods and exterior walls of the main house and a small cottage in the rear. Brick and flagstone pathways, latticework, and garden seating lend a cozy backdrop for numerous potted containers and garden art treasures nestled within planting beds.

Another garden goes even further with a collection of sun-drenched, flamboyant tropicals, succulents, roses and perennials that only slightly upstage berries and vegetables in a backyard hillside garden — all neatly laid out around a central patio with painted furniture where the gardener relaxes and takes in the entire scene.

One of the larger sites, a California version of an English country garden, has space enough for sumptuous borders filled with interesting specimen plants as well as more familiar species. On Santa Rosa’s outskirts, it’s country enough to be home to horses and chickens and an ancient oak that provides a rustic backdrop to manicured garden beds.

A spacious garden certified by the National Wildlife Federation as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat hosts birds, bees, butterflies and beneficial insects year-round. Many of the habitat plants now occupy space that was once a lawn. Native buckwheats (Eriogonum), salvias, asters and various daisies, hyssop (Agastache), buddleias, and ornamental grasses are just a few of the more drought-tolerant plants that also feed the fauna. An especially interesting feature is a system for harvesting rainwater to use as the dry season begins.

Not all of the gardens on tour separate ornamentals and edibles. One strives to have no fixed lines where boundaries are blurred and edibles are intermixed with ornamentals. And yet another site has developed a dedicated space hidden by hedges where vegetables grow in raised beds separated from the pool and the rest of the garden.

As you might expect from a teaching institution, the UC volunteers will be offering information and demonstrations at each site. The range of topics is wide: composting, gopher control, water-wise techniques and planting schemes, beekeeping basics, growing olives and evaluating oils, fire safety tips and Sudden Oak Death.

An outdoor market will offer over 2000 perennials, herbs and succulents propagated from the gardens on tour, all at bargain prices. And a craft market will feature birdhouses, pots, and other garden ornaments.

Rosemary McCreary, a Sonoma County gardener, gardening teacher and author, writes the weekly Homegrown column for The Press Democrat. Write to her at P.O. Box 910, Santa Rosa, 95402; or send fax to 664-9476.