New Town Garden Tour 2017

The New Tour Garden Club held its annual tour this weekend.  It is one of my favorite times of the year here in New Town.  Our homes here are unusual in that our yards are fairly small and the design of them is important if you are going to get all the function you want from them.  So it is with great pleasure that we share how residents of New Town designed their spaces to meet their needs.

There were nine homes on the tour, including ours!  We are a "flashback garden," having been on the tour before. The premise of "flashback gardens" are that tour participants who attend annually can see how the garden and yard have progressed since the last tour.  We had three "flashback gardens" this year.

First, each and every one of them is unique and wonderful.  In this post I do not plan to go over each garden in its entirety, but instead to share with you my favorite parts of each garden.  Others might disagree with my choices, and that's perfectly fine. I get that we might like different things!

In the first " home" garden, I fell in love with this wine bottle wall.  The wall made the rounds on Facebook, and this homeowner has fantastic skills and was able to make it.  It is every bit as glorious as it looks!

The second " home" was ours and I will share more about our home in a bit.  The third " home" was this zigzag garden.  The homeowner had added this adorable art.  Isn't it perfect on her garage door?

The rest of the homes were new to the tour this year.  I loved so many things about this tiny garden but the winding path to the white fence, is just charming.

The next new garden was modern and the horizontal fencing was so striking against the risen planters.  A cover created great shade and a restful place to hang out.

The third home owner had a wonderful front yard setting. I loved the pink granite rock edging, too Don't those ferns look peaceful?

The fourth yard was all about entertaining. It was small but there were three areas for entertaining! This adorable firepit caught my eye.

The fifth yard was amazing with container gardening. These containers were huge!  I loved the painted petunias in this one!

The sixth new garden was an immaculate oasis. The lush grass and carefully manicured yard were so pretty but the art is wonderful.  We called it Birds on a Wire while we were touring!

Our home was on the tour, as I mentioned earlier.  We were on the tour in 2014, just a few months after we moved in.  We had a lot done but the garden needed to mature.  Here is the garden nearly four years later.

New decking with porch and hot tub.

New butterfly garden with Missouri natives, and new art!

Brand new this year is a cutting garden so I can make bouquets for my house!

View from the northwest corner.

New conversation pit that echoes the shape of the firepit.

New potting bench made by Bob.

For the first time, our hydrangeas bloomed beautifully!

For this special occasion, Bob and I decided we wanted to get out the Steffes Store Coke machine that was in the store for decades.  We cleaned it thoroughly and filled it with ice and cold drinks. We rarely use this as it is very old and we want to be sure and preserve it for our daughter.  I think she was very happy to see it!  We used it in our Jefferson City home a lot when Ashley was a teen.

Ashley with the Steffes Store Coke machine.

We also had a wreath raffle.  Several members of our group made wreaths to raffle off.  Here they are, all so beautiful and original.  They were all very popular!

Aren't they gorgeous? I won the orange one on the top left! Lucky me!  The raffle was a wonderful success, too!  We are already planning for next year and hope that we can get a wonderful day like we did this year. It was hot, but everyone who attended said it was wonderful!