The rain came and went, the sun shone and the crowds arrived for Flower Power- Cool Digs & Groovy Gardens, the 15th annual Kelowna garden tour. The 8 private gardens swung open their garden gates to almost 1000 novice and professional gardeners on Saturday, June 16th.
Flower Power was definitely not your typical ‘garden variety’ tour. Attendees had the opportunity to speak with gardening experts Ken Salvail of AM1150 ‘The Garden Show’, Xeriscape Guru Gwen Steele, the Okanagan Master Gardeners and Permascape Pro Toni Boot. Artists were scattered throughout the gardens with their beautiful artwork to inspire, along with wine tastings, beautiful table and gardenscapes, amazing random prize giveaways and the opportunity to bid on beautiful bountiful planters. Wandering through the gardens worked up an appetite for a lot of tour goers who kept both the Okanagan Street Food Truck and Mark Filatow’s Waterfront pop up café busy serving up delicious snacks and lunches.
“The gardens on the tour were meant to inspire, and judging by the pictures, notes and conversations I overheard, I can imagine that a whole new range of gardening ideas will result from what visitors took away from this year’s event”, explained title sponsor, Chris Sorensen of National Bank Financial Wealth Management. This year the garden tour included a palatial waterfront estate, an award winning chef’s garden, a family garden where they practise square foot gardening to reap a harvest of vegetables for the dinner table, and a small garden that was recognized as Best Small Garden by Communities in Bloom. There was literally a garden for everyone!
Home & garden owner Sue Martin said, “it was a great experience for us to share our garden with others, and I know it gave pleasure to so many people. Their compliments really validated all our hard work and made it a very special day for us.”
Flower Power – Cool Digs & Groovy Gardens is a community legacy event raising funds for Ballet Kelowna. Thanks to the sponsors, home & garden owners, artists, wineries, experts and tour attendees an amazing $34,000 was raised to keep this professional ballet company on their toes.
For photos of all of the gardens (More than 440, to be exact!), visit the Welcome to Kelowna Facebook Page
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