The Petals & Pathways Home Garden Tour is back and blooming this weekend.

The Master Gardener Foundation of Clallam County’s popular event is scheduled for 10 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday, June 25, featuring six Port Angeles-area gardens. Two are in town and four gardens are located along U.S. Highway 112.

Tickets for the 27th-annual tour are $15 in advance at the following Sequim locations: Over the Fence, 118 E. Washington St.; Sunny Farms Country Store, 261461 U.S. Highway 101, and The Co-op Farm and Garden, 216 E. Washington St.

In Port Angeles, get tickets at: Port Book and News, 104 E. First St.; Swains General Store, 602 E. First St., and Airport Garden Center, 2200 W. Edgewood Dr. In Joyce, get tickets at Arts & Antique, 50876 U.S. Highway 112. In Forks, get tickets Forks Outfitters, 950 S. Forks Ave., or Rusty Gate Nursery, 221 Wood St.

On tour day, tickets are $20.

Tickets can also be purchased online at clallammgf.org.

Petals & Pathways is a self-guided tour. Ticket holders can use the map printed on the ticket to visit any or all the gardens in any order. The ticket has directions and descriptions of the gardens.

All home gardens have been carefully selected by Master Gardeners with parking, accessibility, diversity in design, and creativity, tour organizers said. The gardens are named to reflect their highlights such as “Grandma’s Garden” which is rich in family history and the peacefulness of “Serenity in Four Seasons.”

Visitors will experience extensive woodland and meadow landscapes, numerous hanging baskets, vegetable gardens, fruit tree orchards, water features, fire ring gathering areas, a rain garden, permaculture and a greenhouse.

All the gardens will have Master Gardener volunteers to help with questions on plant identification. A map will be printed on the tickets for this self-guided tour.

Proceeds from the tour help to maintain the Woodcock Demonstration Garden in Sequim and numerous Master Gardener community services such as the Youth Enrichment Program (YEP) and educational outreach programs.

About the gardens

• “Grandma’s Garden” is the first stop on the Master Gardener 27th Annual Petals to Pathways Garden Tour.

This gem in the middle of Port Angeles is rich in family history and local flair. The family originally owned Gross’s nursery in Port Angeles which nurtured this lifelong love and knowledge of growing flowers.

“Grandma’s Garden” demonstrates how a very small yard can be transformed above ground with glowing containers filled with lots of color-unique annuals and perennials, beautiful hanging baskets and trees.

More than 100 hanging baskets are grown each year from seed. The homeowner and family are their own gardeners. All flower baskets are emptied every spring and filled with new soil and plants. The greenhouse is filled by the first of February on the deck and grow most of the flowers from seed. All brickwork in the front and backyard was done by hand by the homeowners.

The family handled many Fourth of July Celebrations fireworks shows in Port Angeles. Don’t miss the old firework mortars that have been transformed into homemade containers and plant stands.

• “Serenity in Four Seasons” is a gardener’s dream at first sight. The design objective creates a space of peace, tranquility, and serenity; a sacred space to relax and connect with nature. Textural shrubs, perennials, and a rain garden fill the front yard. The homeowners created a landscape of year-round interest with plant material that is dramatic with a focus on plant combinations, playing with textures and colors.

The artistic “Pebbles” gate welcomes guests into the exceptional side garden. Cryptomeria’s, Hebes, Libertia grandiflora and Podophyllum ‘Spotty Dotty” are but a few of the unusual plants to discover.

The back garden with its imposing large deck is situated in the center of the property connecting the “people space” to the gardens. Large glazed containers brimming with flowering plants adorn the sitting area. Agapanthus “Rotterdam,” Scheffleria, Leycestera formosa, and hundreds of seasonal bulbs build a palette creating a calm peaceful setting.

The abundance of flowers and a fountain attract several bird species that visit daily. There is a quiet space tucked back in the garden for reading, listening to music, and to enjoy watching the birds and clouds. Along the other side of the yard is the food garden of raised beds, filled with asparagus, strawberry, culinary herbs, and vegetables. The vegetables and all the property have drip irrigation to conserve water usage.

The homeowners moved to Port Angeles in the summer of 2016, purchasing a new home with a property that was a blank slate. They view their gardens as a sanctuary and not a work project. While on the surface it may look like a lot of routine work; it is actually a low maintenance garden as plants were selected that require little care with maximum year-round impact. See for yourself what can be achieved in just three-years creating a little paradise.

• “A Place to Reflect” located west of Port Angeles, is set back among towering evergreens. The entry drive offers views of several acres of mowed ground on the north side and native growth to the south. The heart of this compact garden is a water feature sporting multiple cascades, dropping some 20-odd feet into a pond of about 80,000 gallons where colorful fishes make a home.

From the pond, water is recirculated to the top of the cascade. Walkways of paver stones and concrete meander around the pond and define the perimeter of the garden proper. The plantings incorporate a wide variety of annual and perennial flowering plants, specimens of evergreen and deciduous trees, and native fruiting shrubs.

The owner’s home overlooks the garden from the east, and an adjacent covered patio and fire ring offer an area for outdoor dining and relaxation. Strategically placed boulders around the fire ring offer the chance to “pull up a rock and have a seat.” Across the pond is a small beach and dock. The semi-rural location means that the visitor may spy local black-tail deer who offer free, if random, yet frequent pruning services. Elk, bear, and bald eagles are occasional visitors.

The pond provides ever-changing reflections of the surrounding trees, passing clouds, and a shifting palette of colors as the flowers bloom, each in its turn.

• “Woodland Oasis” is a 1906 homestead with 20 acres and a small year-round stream that runs through the yard. Its rich in family history and very beautiful and has always been this third generation’s very favorite place. There is pasture and an old orchard. Often, they wake to find a large herd of elk or deer in the field, with their fawn playing tag or young bucks jousting.

The homeowners got the gardening but and began their ongoing gardening project in 2003. There are several gardens throughout the yard some big and some small. The wooded area was overgrown so they cleared brush to create a walking trail along the creek past the old growth cedar and through the alders. The path extends to the heavier wooded area where you’ll see stumps from old growth cedar that the family cut to build the house and barn. The stumps have the old springboard notches in them; the method the old loggers used when downing large trees. Family lore maintains that the road to Joyce extended through these woods.

You can still see the old tractor and the implements used to the fields. They line the driveway as you enter the property. Since being chosen as one of the gardens on the tour, the homeowners have added a few special features to make their garden extra fun. They look forward to sharing their little piece of heaven with you and hope you enjoy it as much as they do.

• “A Permaculture Garden” offers garden visitors a different approach to gardening. The homeowners have taken the permaculture holistic approach, sometimes referred to as forest gardening, to cultivating their land.

As you enter the garden by way of the south end of the driveway, there is a small grove of sweet cherries growing among cedars and alders at the site of an old sawmill. While the sawmill is long gone, the cherry trees serve as a marker. Because of the random arrangement of trees, the homeowners imagine the workers may have inadvertently planted the trees after eating cherries and spitting the pits on ground.

The homeowners have cleared a small area surrounded by a conifer forest for their home and garden.

The area designated the “forest garden” features thirteen fruit trees, berry bushes and hops managed by ducks, who keep the slug population in check. In the adjacent chicken yard are chestnuts, filberts and a variety of elderberries. Look for the medlar tree, an unusual fruit tree that dates from Roman times.

Patches of salmonberries, blackberries, and wasabi, a Japanese mustard, have been planted to take advantage of swampy areas of the property. Vegetable gardens and greenhouses are placed in sunny locations. To overcome the challenges of our shorter growing season, the homeowners grow figs trees and grapes in one of the greenhouses and tomatoes and similar warmth-loving vegetables in another.

Among other highlights of this garden are the homeowners’ straw bale house, yurt and chicken coop, a pallet house, a cob oven, a bunny hutch, and a pole bean tepee. The animals, structures, and range of food crops grown in this garden make it a delight for any gardener to visit. A visit here should get you thinking of ways to utilize hard to cultivate areas of your own garden.

• “Fairnie Brae” is located on the Olympic Peninsula’s north coast. The name is Scottish for a ferny upland rising above the water’s edge. It sits on a sunny bluff overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The homeowners have owned the property since 2001 and love the sunny flat meadows, rich soil, and expansive views — just what they wanted as they retired to become gardeners.

When designing the grounds, they strove to create a natural, open, and aesthetically pleasing environment while integrating their desire for vegetable gardens, magical groves, park-like meadows, and trails for wandering. The homeowners sought harmony with the home and unity in the overall appearance of the property.

Their first undertaking was building the vegetable garden. They erected an 8-foot fence to protect twenty raised beds that provide vegetables year-round. Soon after, rock-bordered gardens, with a diversity of flowers, bushes, and trees took shape around the house in spaces that called for color and texture. A few decorative items from their time in Indonesia are scattered about the gardens, including a heavy cut granite birdbath, several cut-metal decorative panels, a carved “Lady of the Garden,” traditional doors from West Timor and several small Indonesian carvings.

The wooded groves of native plants surrounding five grassy meadows were the last to receive their attention. Benches and trails encourage them to take time to enjoy nature. The deer love to browse in the meadows, birds flock to the berries, bunnies nibble the clover, and at night, fairies dance in the groves.

Photo by Karen Teig/Master Gardener Foundation of Clallam County “A Place to Reflect” located west of Port Angeles, the third stop on the 2022 Petals & Pathways tour, is set back among towering evergreens. The heart of this compact garden is a water feature sporting multiple cascades.

Photo by Karen Teig/Master Gardener Foundation of Clallam County The fourth garden on the 2022 Petals & Pathways tour set for June 25 is “Woodland Oasis.”