SPRINGFIELD, Vt. – Visit five gardens in the Springfield area, meet your gardening neighbors, and enjoy a delicious lunch on July 27. We’ve not had a garden tour since 2019, and are excited to get back out enjoying garden visits. This tour includes vegetable and flower gardens and natural plantings with the following gardeners.
Melissa Post will show you her extensive garden made of raised beds. She also has a greenhouse, 32 blueberry bushes, and three vigorous elderberry bushes. Post will describe how she gardens throughout the year – even through the winter. Her seedlings are grown in soil blocks and transplanted outdoors. She will demonstrate how to make soil blocks and the advantages of using them.
Toni Streeter welcomes you to flowers in the woods embraced by a plantation of giant northern white pines at Tree Farm Campground. Enjoy the sculptures throughout, and view artwork inside the lodge. Then take a stroll through the woods to see the blueberry patch and vegetable garden. Her father’s huge metal sculpture can also be found within this beautiful landscape.
Marita Johnson’s shade-filled back yard haven with its “Fertile Crescent” garden will have hostas, oriental lilies, coneflowers, and daisies to enjoy. Her raised bed veggie garden with 12-foot-tall hollyhocks behind it will be in full swing. Her hydrangea is packed with beautiful blue snowball blooms. Walk the mossy labyrinth, following the rock-outlined shape of an iris. Johnson will give a demonstration on how to dig, divide, and replant irises – August is the time for that task.
Lydia Moore keeps the birds and butterflies in mind while planting. She’ll show us around her established perennial flower beds at her home with old stone walls and barn foundations. What was a retirement hobby has become a full time enjoyable job.
Our last stop will be at Diane Kemble’s, where you’ll enjoy lunch. There’s a vegetable garden, peaches, elderberries, blueberries, and lots of flowers. Stroll a mowed path to the pond and we can keep the conversation going about how we encourage wildlife, decide when and how much to mow, and even deal with those pesky invasives.
The Works in Progress Garden Tour is sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Church in Springfield, Vt. There is a suggested donation, which includes lunch. To reserve a spot and receive full details of the day, including carpooling, email Diane Kemble at dkemble@vermontel.net, or text or call 802-324-9465. The tour, which ends with lunch, runs from 8 a.m. – 1 p.m. It’s rain or shine, and carpooling is encouraged and fun.