Boise Garden Tour 2008

This is repost from own blog on June 24th of this year. I'm reposting this to help join Milimusing's Open Garden Scheme (that's a hyperlink so you can join the fun) in which we can share photos from our gardens around the world!

Enjoy!

On Sunday Chad's mom and I went on the Garden Tour to benefit the Idaho Botanical Gardens. I thought going on the tour would be the perfect way to see what grows well in my area, especially because I'm trying to get used to a new climate zone having recently moved from California's Napa Valley to Idaho's Treasure Valley.

Here's a slide show of some of the photos I took on the tour, and then I talk a bit about each garden! These gardens are in private homes, and for organization's sake I've named them by their street.

 

 

Talon Creek: The first garden we visited was in a very small back yard. There were two small lawns but the centerpiece was this densely planted creek-like water feature. The water was fairly shallow, yet there were fish! I had always been told that in cold climates you should dig your pond to be 3-4 feet to prevent the fish from freezing during the winter. Luckily, the designer was there so I could speak with her. She said that if you can keep the water flowing then it won't freeze and you won't have to dig your pond "half way to China." She said the only real concern for fish is predators, but I haven't seen any raccoons in my neighborhood, we do have cranes but my pond is sheltered by trees so they shouldn't see the pond while flying over. I had intended to use photovoltaic cells to run my pond pump so I don't think I could keep the water flowing all the time. Still, something to think about. Everyone else asked the designer about the unusual black lacey plant with white frothy flowers (see my slide show). It's a black sambucus, an elderberry relative, that grows well in zones 4-7. If you're interested in growing it click here for info.

 

Arbor Island Way: This garden, and particularly this view, is somewhat famous here as I've lived here a short time and I've already seen this garden in the newspaper and a magazine. This lake is a community lake in this subdivision (you can see other houses in the back ground) and these gardeners have "borrowed the view" quite nicely. The lady of the house is an interior designer who uses her design skills in the landscape, and the gentleman of the house is a retired construction contractor who builds every thing in the garden. They've toured Europe a lot and particularly enjoy English gardens, the influence of which you can clearly see in my slide show photos. Their garden also features a patio room completely decorated with paintings. Ya know, I've been thinking about doing some outdoor painting for our outdoor living room and dining area.

 

 

 

 

 

Woodlander Drive: This garden wasn't so much a bustling garden as it was a very intelligently designed water feature. This home is near the freeway and backs right up to the Boise River Greenbelt trail, just beyond which is a common area for this subdivision. It's a lovely setting but potentially very noisy, but this water feature splashes loudly thus drowning out any outside noise. Chad's parents' house can have a bit of highway noise if the wind blows just right so I recommended to Chad's mom that they get a loudly splashy water feature, they already have a creek but it's very soft. This garden also had a very lovely cat (see slide show), and IMO cats are very important features in the garden!

 

 

Half Moon Lane: Dogs are also important features in the garden and this home owner (white shirt and khaki shorts) seemed to enjoy showing off his Jack Russell terrier more than his estate and garden. While playing fetch, this Jack Russell not only swam for the ball but he also dove underwater when the owner held the ball under. The guy then threw ball way out into the ginormous lake (see slide show for lake photo) and the Jack Russell happily swam out for it and brought it back. If you look at the rock feature behind the pool you'll see that the waterfall is part of the pool system. At the top of the rocks the water actually splits and part of it flows into the adjoining hot tub. Both the hot tub and pool are "infinity edge" (see how there's no definable edge on the garden/lake side of the pool). It was a lovely and exceptionally impressive estate but it was more like fantastic landscaping than a true garden, IMO. But even though it was obviously professionally landscaped it was also obvious in the details that the homeowners had a lot of input into the design, even the bricks in the driveway circle had carved into them religious and inspirational sayings!

 

 

Moonbeam Way 1: We went to two houses on Moonbeam Way, this was the first house. This pond is next to the driveway, and the water empties out of it via this little creek and falls into the subdivisions community lake (see slide show for lake photos). Again, this was more like impressive landscaping than a true garden but it was very cool. On the lake side they have a small peninsula on which they had built a stone gazebo (see slide show). The gazebo had been finished only a month ago! And the guy who built it was in attendance and quite proud of his creation, and rightly so! He's in the slide show photo handing out free bottle of water and inviting guests to sit down and relax. He apologized that they didn't yet have the speakers installed, but he pointed out all of the lights which were designed not only to show off the gazebo's architecture at night but also to provide lighting for reading and/or conversation. One of my favorite parts of the garden was up by the house they had a stand for a heavy bag and speed bag.  I said, "Now that's my kind of garden!"

 

Moonbeam Way 2: This house was across the street from the previous house and also had a water feature next to the driveway that ran down a creek to the lake. BTW, all these houses also had their own white sand beaches and piers for their boats, all of the patios had outdoor kitchens at least one of which included a dishwasher! This house had a lovely garden on the patio by the infinity edge pool that looked like it was probably actually maintained by the homeowners. The coolest feature was this sheeted waterfall that empties into the kiddie pool. behind this sheet the air temperature was much cooler than the outside air temperature, and there were chairs and a little fridge. I'm guessing that this is where the adults spend their life guard duty time on very hot days.

 

 

Rooster Drive: "Now that's a garden!" That's what I said when I saw this garden bursting at its seams with wonderful flowers. This flower bed surrounded the veggie bed, and that's always an intelligent thing to do, you need flowers to attract beneficial insects to protect your veggies from crop damaging insects. This garden had a pond with the most spectacularly beautiful koi I have ever seen (see slide show)! The garden really reminded me of the rural farm gardens I came to love in Napa, so much so that I said to my mother-in-law, "You what this garden needs? Peacocks!" Unfortunately, homeowners weren't there for me to make the suggestion and instruct them on how to keep peacocks in cold climates--believe me, I researched it before living here and if we lived more out in the country I would definitely keep peacocks!

 

Rush Drive: This last garden belongs to the lady who painted the flowers on the garden tour ticket. In this vignette I really liked the way the conifers and roses look all backlit, and I think it takes a pretty sophisticated eye to create something like that. The raised bed veggie garden was across the "Back 40" (no, it wasn't really 40 acres but it was still a huge stretch of lawn). Like the previous garden, they surrounded their veggies with flowers that attract insects, but unlike the previous garden their back fence was covered with grapevines.  Unfortunately, I missed the window for planting grape vines this year and I really REALLY miss grapes vines. They had a lovely wisteria covered patio that reminded me patios in my childhood, and a shade garden by the front porch. You can't see it well in my photo of the the shade garden but just on the other side of the Japanese maples was a little creek water feature, it's difficult to see but it has that all important trickling sound to mask any neighborhood noises (although it seemed like a quiet neighborhood).

 

That's it for now! I hope you enjoyed my photos and descriptions. As I've been typing this blog post a light cloud cover came over so I think I'll take this opportunity to prune my roses and/or get started enlarging my pond! I cannot tell you how badly I want to have fish!