IF YOU’RE a fan of Beyond the Garden Gate, the popular garden tour of great Ross gardens on Mother’s Day weekend, make sure you go this year — there won’t be another until 2016.
“We are trying to pace our volunteer efforts over a two-year budget,” says Erica Hunt, chairwoman of the May 10 tour that benefits Ross School’s fine arts program. “Ross is a very small community with 800 homes, and finding homeowners who are gracious enough to open up their gardens to us should be easier on a biannual cycle.”
To tempt you, she and her team have assembled a roster of four gorgeous landscapes distinguished by their A-list creators — Janelle Hobart, Brandon Tyson and Michael Yandle.
“Visitors will enjoy a variety of gardens that offer not only beauty and elegance, but also incorporate practicality ranging from an edible garden for family dinners to smart use of natural resources through recycling rainwater and catching irrigation run-off,” she says.
Here’s a preview of each garden:
“Magnificent Mediterranean” is a hillside landscape on a grand scale, designed by Michael Yandle of Michael B. Yandle Landscape Architecture.
Its stunning components include a beautiful entrance fountain, magnolias and live oaks, white azaleas, climbing roses and clematis, rose-planted terraces, stately cypress and palm trees.
The pool and pool house have spectacular views of Mount Tam, and it has a potager and a grape arbor over a dining area defined by limestone columns along with an outdoor fireplace.
The garden also includes a tropical waterfall and a stone-edged pond.
“Japonesque on the Hill” is a garden inspired by the owner’s love of the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park and designed by Sonoma County-based designer Brandon Tyson.
It honors the tradition of Japanese design without the precise adherence to its strict principles.
The centerpiece is a moon bridge that crosses a pond, bordered by carefully selected boulders, lending sound and movement to the garden.
A path meanders through the garden full of various trees and plants that celebrate the Japanese influence on gardening. Japanese maples, weeping cherries, conifers and cypress give the garden dimension and color in shades of greens, reds, gray-greens and purples. Smaller plants introduce black leaves, spiked bunches and lime-colored mounds.
“Sunny Respite” is a productive garden designed by Janell Hobart of Denler Hobart Gardens that marries edibles with ornamentals.
A large oak shades the remnants of an old Japanese garden with mature camellias, azaleas and rhododendrons in one area. More shade comes from valley oaks and redwood trees. White crabapple trees border the pool terrace, behind it is a garden filled with roses and foxglove for summer color and at its end is a small orchard of apple, peach, and pear trees nestle.
Behind the pool house is the vegetable and cutting garden composed of raspberries and blackberries, espaliered apples and pears, and masses of blueberry bushes.
Tuteurs and obelisks decorate the raised boxes that are filled with rotating summer and winter vegetables, flowers, and bulbs.
“Family Frolic,” a second garden on the tour created by Hobart graces the sloping site of a brown-shingled home. Its several layers have been created for family fun.
There are daffodils, tulips and flowering trees that bloom in spring, and roses, hydrangeas, foxglove, anemones for summer color.
An old stone retaining wall borders the lawn that leads to a new terraced flower garden with each bed of roses and peonies centered by a pyramid tuteur.
Another flight of stone steps leads to the family playground with trampoline and swings and where two antique fountains offer a charming bath for birds and support for the climbing clematis.
PJ Bremier writes on home, garden, design and entertaining topics every Saturday and also on her blog at DesignSwirl.co. She may be contacted at P.O. Box 412, Kentfield, CA 94914, or at pj@pjbremier.com.
if you go
What: Beyond the Garden Gate garden tour
When: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. May 10
Where: Ross School and Common Park, 9 Lagunitas Road, Ross
Admission: $40, $50 at door
Information: rossgardentour.org
More: Shuttles leave to tour headquarters at College of Marin’s Lot No. 15 on Kent Avenue every 15 minutes from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; optional boxed lunch costs $10, pre-ordering recommended
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