April and May are popular months for local garden tours. This year the Garden Conservancy’s national garden tour program Open Days is showcasing gardens in Pasadena and the San Fernando Valley.
This Sunday, April 21 from 10 – 4 p.m. three gardens will be open including the Bennett-DeBeixedon Garden created on a previously abandoned lot in 2003. Wrapping around a newly built northern European-style cottage, the site utilizes the sloped and rocky terrain to create a two-level slate patio with river rock walls and steps.
If you love roses, you won’t want to miss the Schumacher Garden Retreat filled with roses, California native sages, and citrus in this Linda Vista charmer. As you enter the garden, you’ll meet birds, butterflies, and native bees delighting in this Certified Wildlife Habitat.
Visitors enter the Abascal Family Garden through an allée of white crape myrtles. With the help of the landscape architect Sally Farnum, the Abascals created a Mediterranean-inspired garden that is a delight to the senses.
Next weekend, Sunday, April 28, the Open Days program moves to the San Fernando Valley with three gardens in Studio City and Sherman Oaks.
Buzz contributor and local tree expert, Emina Darakjy will be a docent for a delightful garden in Studio City that was recently featured in the Los Angeles Times.
Homeowners Khoi Pham and Michael Solberg have transformed the front yard of their Storybook cottage from dead grass to a “wonderland of native plants, water-conserving bioswales, a patio mosaic made from recycled concrete and permeable gravel paths with a delightful crunch,” according to the LA Times.
The Wrightwood Estates Hillside Garden in Studio City surrounds a Mid-Century Modern house and features many mature trees and shrubs including a pair of majestic Canary Island Date Palms.
At Longridge Garden in Sherman Oaks, Landscape architect Joseph Marek created a new front garden of this 1940s-built traditional home dominated by an ancient and rarely-seen-in-Southern California silver maple tree (Acer saccharinum). The plantings in this white picket–fenced front garden reflect a more East Coast aesthetic where Marek has introduced water-wise planting like Westringias, teucriums, and Little Ollies mixed with hydrangeas, pittosporums, and climbing roses.
Next month you can visit five local gardens that will be open for the Windsor Square Hancock Park Historical Society’s Annual Garden Tour and Silent Auction on Saturday, May 4 from 12 noon to 4 p.m.
“This year’s tour, “All Good Gardens, Great and Small” features five delicious gardens of varying sizes, three in Windsor Square, one in Fremont Place, and one just outside Hancock Park on Fuller Avenue,” WSHPHS President Richard Battaglia told the Buzz. “The one on Fuller Ave. is a charming garden attached to a lovely home designed by the one and only Paul Williams.”
Stay tuned for more details on these special gardens.
