By Julie Snyder
C & G Staff Writer

ST. CLAIR SHORES — St. Clair Shores’ best and brightest gardens will be featured during the St. Clair Shores Yardeners’ annual Garden Tour next weekend.

Yardeners Chairperson Laurel Fowler said the 17th annual event, which will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 7, will highlight eight local backyard gardens, each chosen for their aesthetic attributes, uniqueness and eco-friendly layout.

“The tours started as a way of introducing people to alternative ways of taking care of your gardens and yards other than using chemicals that might be harmful to the gardeners themselves, the waters that are so important to our area, the beneficial insects and birds that visit the gardens, and to our children who play on the grass and dig in the soil,” Fowler said. 

“Recently, with more exposure about the conservation of water and other energy sources, the tours show some insight into using native plants to help,” she continued. “The trees we can use for shading the house, the Michigan native plants that encourage butterflies, honey bees, and birds that pollinate our vegetable plants and fruit bushes and trees. Native plants require less watering and are adapted to our climate. They like the wet springs, and they hold water to get them through the summer heat.”

The gardens were also chosen for their distinctive ways of conserving water by using rain barrels and making compost to amend the soil instead of throwing kitchen scraps, fall leaves and plant trimmings into the garbage. 

“We try to have a sampling of different types of ‘earth friendly’ gardening practices we may encounter as we meet the gardeners,” Fowler said.

She said those who participate in the Yardeners Garden Tours always learn something new, from ways to display plants to how to use simple household items for garden use.

“We have some very creative residents here,” Fowler said.

Visnaw resident Monica Damore’s backyard garden is only two years in the making. It was impressive enough to catch the attention of Yardeners members early on.

Comprising about 30 different varieties of annuals, tropical plants and ferns, an array of begonias and perennials, Damore’s yard is visually stimulating.

“It’s packed with color,” she said. “It’s really quite breathtaking.”

Damore started working on building up her garden only last summer. “It looks completely different now from last year,” she said. There’s a stone walkway leading around the garden, a small water pond still under construction — it will be ready in time for the tours — as well as vegetable and herb gardens.

“It’s always evolving,” she said, adding that she’s looking forward to showing off her hard work to those who will appreciate it the most — her fellow green thumbs.

“I’m so geeked about it,” Damore said. “I’m fired up.”

Tom and Nancy Stewart’s modest-sized colonial house is surrounded by Michigan-friendly nature.

The street view is a long front porch with two evergreen bushes, yellow and white daisies, a yucca plant in the center, a couple of potted geraniums and hanging baskets.

Once at the Stewart home, tourists will enter the garden through an old-fashioned white gate between shrubs at the side of the garage, where there’s a vegetable garden and Nancy Stewart’s hot house.

“Then in the backyard, we have a cement patio, a screened porch overlooking our garden and a pond with a park-like view,” Tom Stewart said. “We have flowers surrounding the pond that grow seasonally, in spring there is tulips, hyacinth, forsythia bushes, and purple lilac bushes, yellow and purple iris. In summer, the ferns take over with daylilies, brown-eyed Susan, and a flowering rose of Sharon, wild geraniums, lavender, to name a few,” he said. “In the fall we occasionally have brown and orange mums bloom, if they decide to come up, with the changing colors of the leaves and the maple trees.”

The Stewarts has also labored for 15 years on their koi-filled pond, complete with a waterfall, a wishing well that goes into a stream then into the pond which has water lilies, iris and celery plants. The Stewarts use rain barrels for watering, though sometimes they use cold tap water to keep the koi pond cool, and solar lighting abounds in the garden and the pond after sunset.

“It’s truly a very relaxing setting for us and our family and friends,” Stewart said.     

Registration for the 17th annual St. Clair Shores Yardeners Garden Tour will be taken beginning at 9 a.m. Aug. 7 at the Selinsky-Green Farmhouse Museum behind the St. Clair Shores Public Library on the corner of 11 Mile Road and Jefferson. The cost for the tour is $5. There will be docents at each garden to answer questions.