Garden Tour (aka a Chance to Snoop)

Although we are a long way from working on the small patch of patio and dirt at the back of the house, that Americans call a yard and Europeans call a garden, we took some time out the other week for a garden tour. Every year, the San Clemente Garden Club holds an open house at several gardens of its members. Tickets cost $25 each with the gardens open from 10am- 4pm.
There were six gardens chosen. Three in San Clemente and three in San Juan Capistrano. Each visitor got a small booklet with directions and a small explanation about the garden and its inspirations. You could go in any order and take as long or as little in each garden. We got off to a late start but still had all the time we needed.
We started at a large and beautiful home in San Clemente. I wasn’t crazy about the garden but what was nice was how they had designed it to be very private with tall hedges blocking their view of the homes immediately around them.
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It’s not until you get up higher onto their sun decks that you have any idea of the size of some of the adjacent buildings.


The home had a covered patio running around most of the house with lots of windows providing a beautiful backdrop to the interior. We weren’t able to tour the house, which looked lovely from what we could see including this one door, which was left open for our viewing pleasure. Beautiful.


It’s easy to think that only wealthy people can have beautiful homes. True, money helps you do a lot of things you can’t do otherwise, but with creativity, you can have your own kind of wonderful. That is what we are trying to do.

The next garden was inspired, in part, by a visit the owner made to England. I liked it but am not sure it is anything like the way we plan to go.


I didn’t care for the third garden at all. I thought it very bland and not in quite the condition I think a garden club member would leave it if they knew a hundred or more people would be wandering around it. But we did like this plant that we were told was Clematis. It reminded us a little of the Lilikoi (passion fruit) flower.


Onto to San Juan Capistrano. Wending our way through Saturday traffic (those swallows – they leave it till the end of the week to do all their shopping) we arrived at garden number four. Full marks for cuteness. Bonus points even.
A pink cottage all decked out with frills and flounces and a beautiful garden shaded by an enormous, old (by US standards) oak tree.
How’s this for a fun and pretty idea.


I thoroughly enjoyed this garden although, again, it is probably not the look we will go for. But it was lovely to experience it and we got one idea from it. You can have the sound and look of a water feature, without it taking up a lot of space.


Garden number five also in SJC was not particularly impressive in my opinion. I thought they had too many of the same plants all around the garden. Rather than giving an impression of consistency, I thought it looked like lack of variety.
But they did have a nice water feature tumbling down their little hillside.


And we like this lovely Monstera plant, which makes a big statement. It’s on our maybe list.


The last garden was one of my favourites, not because I would copy it but because its design was a perfect match to the house described as Monterey Colonial style.

A good example is their walled vegetable garden.


Although we aren’t planning to do anything in this style, there were several individual items I put on my maybe list.

The first was this edging. I’ve never seen this done before. Simple but stylish.


The garden also had a lot of citrus trees, many in dwarf versions. We love fruit trees but with our tiny patch it seemed like one was the best we could fit in. In several of the gardens we saw fruiting trees in pots, which may be the way to go.
The tree below, though in the ground, caught our eye.

It is a lemon tree, which produces pink lemons.

I’m not thinking about growing roses but I had to get Mr. Remodel to take this picture in the vegetable garden simply because it was so beautiful.


Did you know that many wine growers plant roses at the ends of rows of vines? It’s because they act as canaries in a mine. Pests attacking the roses are an early warning sign for the grower.

I really enjoyed getting out of the house and being in the sunshine getting some ideas. I’m already looking forward to next year’s garden tour.