I was heading to a family event in Arlington, Texas on Saturday, so I added a few days and got to do some scouting for our garden tour in October. I drove down to my sisters on Wednesday. On my way down, I stopped in Mount Pleasant, TX to visit with their local Master Gardeners
who are going to host us for lunch and a garden tour on our way down in October. Wednesday is their weekly work day for their county office project.
I was overly impressed with the demonstration gardens they had on site. They also get mulch delivered by local tree trimmers on a regular basis, and offer it free to local residents.
A member brings his equipment to help load it for people who pick up.
I met with several of their members, but Kay and Sharon gave me the grand tour.
They are so excited about our visit in October, as am I. This large garden is divided up into many individual beds, from native gardens, landscaped areas,
vegetables, herbs, blackberries and blueberries, grapes and butterfly gardens
and a shade woodland walking trail. Each area has their own chairs--known as bed heads! What a treat. After a delicious lunch and visit with Kay and Sharon, it was on to Arlington--an easy drive.
The next morning, my sister and I picked up my old college roommate Cindy and did a whirlwind tour
of most of what we will be doing in October. Our first stop was a quick drive by of the stockyards
which is where we will be staying.
Then it was on to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens
where we did a quick sneak peak and picked up Bob Byers the garden director. While waiting for Bob, we got to see a snippet of the garden.
They had some great leggo displays
throughout the area we got to see, along with some beautiful plants. Then we stopped by a private garden,
whose owner Rob works at the botanical gardens.
He is a master propagator and has so many plant collections--from camellias,
to citrus, ferns, pawpaws and so much more.
We then toured Weston Gardens,
a local nursery with some great unusual plants plus a large display garden.
The venue is used for weddings and other outside events.
It was lovely.
After a tasty lunch with Bob, we left him to continue the tour to Clark
and Chandor Gardens. We got the lay of the land,
and visited with the people in charge so we are better prepared for when we go. All of the gardens were lovely.
We did see more plant damage from the winter weather than I had expected, but many of the gardens are either replacing plants or retraining others. Hardest hit are Indian hawthorn, confederate jasmine vines, live oaks and a few others.
They had more ice than snow, so were not as well-insulated as we were. Some of the gardens had simply replaced damaged plants, so you didn't even know they had damage, while others had a ways to go. Hopefully, by October that will be remedied--but we are in for a fabulous adventure! It should also be a whole lot cooler in October than it was when we visited, with real temperatures in the high 90's but heat indexes even hotter. We drove over 160 miles, walked parts of all the gardens, so we were a bit pooped by the end of the day, but even more excited about our trip in October.