Garden Conservancy Open Days

This past Saturday I had the pleasure of visiting three gardens in the Sacramento area as part of The Garden Conservancy Open Days. The Garden Conservancy is a wonderful organization that works to preserve the beautiful private gardens in the United States and to help open these private gardens to the public for education and enjoyment. I learned about them through Margaret Roach, on her Web site, A Way to Garden. Margaret opens her gardens to the public each year during Open Days in her area in New York. One day I hope to visit her gardens, but until then I will content myself with seeing some of the private gardens in my own neck of the woods.

The first stop was at Maple Rock Gardens in Newcastle. It is situated over three acres in the Sierra Nevada Foothills. The owners, Ruby and Frank Andrews, have created beautiful garden rooms. There is the Memory Garden, Rock Wall Garden, Vegetable Garden, a Croquet Lawn, a Plant Hospital, a Railroad Garden, Orchard, and a Japanese Garden. There is also a wonderful Pavilion that is a shady retreat where you can meditate. We could have stayed there all day! Maple Rock Gardens has recently opened for weddings, corporate gatherings, family reunions, and other events. There were so many things I loved about these gardens, each room was different, but they each flowed effortlessly into the other. The owners are truly artists!


The second stop was at the Golden/Darville Residence in Lincoln. This garden is created on approximately 2.3 acres and is a wildlife garden. There is a spectacular lily pond with a cottage that takes up a good part of the acreage, a vegetable garden, and perennial gardens. We spent quite a bit of time near the lily pond eating cookies and drinking lemonade and soaking up the quiet and peaceful ambience. The small, black Guillards were fun to watch swimming and playing among the lily pads. This garden was so different from the Maple Rock Gardens, but just as lovely. The owners/gardeners have created a very special place here.




Our last stop was The Gardens of Springhill. The gardens are on 54 acres in Lincoln and "is gardening on a grand scale." [The Garden Conservancy] It includes a 400-foot-long statuary garden, a ten-ton, nineteen-foot high fountain; Tequila Hill has hundreds of agave plants, there is a pond with a wooden walkway so that you can view the wetlands and wildlife, close to the house is the rose garden, knot garden, a shade garden. Leaving the gardens you walk through a 500-foot-long arched pergola. Half-way through this pergola is a stop to Uncle Rob's Crazy garden, a gnome and pink flamingo filled garden. Last, but not least, is a small (well, not so small) version of Stonehenge. The owner is English and he and his wife were gracious hosts that day. Peg Poswall made delicious cookies and served them along with bottled water and coffee. John Poswall, a Sacramento attorney and author, drove his golf cart around and stopped and visited with everyone. They supplied us with a hand drawn map with their suggested route through the gardens.



All three gardens were truly remarkable and inspirational. I hope that I can take some of the design elements that I saw and apply them to my little corner of the world.