Gardening: Coeur d’Alene garden tour showcases a diversity of styles
Our early summer gardens are bursting with color right now all across the region. With that kind of floral bounty, it can only mean it’s time for the Coeur d’Alene Garden Club’s annual garden tour.
This year’s tour will be 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. July 7; it will feature four gardens in Hayden and two in Coeur d’Alene. Tickets are $20 and are available online at CdaGardenClub@gmail.com and at local Coeur d’Alene and Hayden nurseries. The website has a complete list of the nursery ticket outlets. The tour is capped at 1,000 tickets, so tour organizers encourage people to buy their tickets early as last year’s tour sold out beforehand.
“We cap the number of tickets so people can really take time to enjoy the gardens and see what other gardeners have done in their space,” said Judy Felder, tour chairperson.
In addition to the gardens, there will be a variety of garden artists and vendors at each garden sharing their art and expertise. Local musicians will add serenity in each garden. The tour will go on rain or shine, so be prepared.
This year’s gardens were selected to show off the diversity of garden styles in both large and small spaces.
Cherise Maynes-Felker’s garden is a peaceful shady retreat in Hayden. The house, built in 2009, is surrounded by a shaded forest garden filled with a variety of perennials, shrubs and trees planted to take advantage of pockets of sun and shade.
“I worked with what was here already,” Maynes-Felker said. I wanted it to look natural.”
Maynes-Felker’s three pugs love their daily exploration of the nature trail she has built around the garden. “I even shovel it out for them in the winter,” she said.
Out in the sunny areas of the garden are fruit trees and berries that Maynes-Felker cans and makes into jams and jellies and a vegetable garden. She grows a native plant medicinal garden of mullein, plantain, yarrow oxeye daisy and purslane as well as a large elderberry bush that provides fruit for syrup in the late summer.
Other gardens on this year’s tour include the Marilyn Nenzel garden which was on the tour in 2011. Now 13 years later, the garden is a good example of how gardens change over time. Sun-loving plants have been replaced by more shade tolerant ones, and garden designs are adapted as gardeners age. Got a hilly or rough site for a garden? Visit the Lowery and Bloem garden to see how two devoted gardeners have adapted slopes and rocks on the edge of the forest to create a space for relaxation, exercise and spiritual health over the last 20 years.
This is the Coeur d’Alene Garden Club’s 26th tour. The proceeds go to support local organizations involved in garden related projects. These include the expansion of the gardens at the Children’s Village, several church gardens that support local food banks, elementary and high school garden projects and, soon, support for gardening projects for senior s.