One of the beautiful Orcas Island gardens from the 2009 Garden Tour
By Midge Kraetzer
On June 26th and June 27th from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., the Orcas Island Garden Club will present its annual garden tour, Orcas in Bloom. Featuring six varied Orcas gardens, this tour has something for everyone.
A splendid hilltop garden with views over much of the San Juans and a sustainable working farm with event space and historic buildings that have been farmed for more than twenty years by the same family begin the tour in the Victorian Valley section of Orcas.
The tour continues on to an iris collector’s garden that also features a drought tolerant section and then on to a waterfront garden covering twenty acres with arboretum, ponds, orchard and enclosed vegetable and flower gardens.The tour then winds its way to Deer Harbor. In Deer Harbor are two gardens, one that has been gardened on since the 1940s and includes a substantial enclosed space with vegetables, roses, and berries and another charming garden surrounding a lovely old cottage containing a wide variety of plants combined in unusual ways.
The tickets for the tour are $20 and can be purchased at Darvills Bookstore, Smith and Speed Mercantile and Driftwood Nursery all in Eastsound.
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