HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-05-02, Page 13THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 2, 2013. PAGE 13. Garden tour borrows from Grey-Bruce model
The Huron Perth Undiscovered
Gardens Tour is taking on new life
this year as it becomes a season-long
event instead of focusing on one
specific day.
Organizers of the program, which
started last year with several gardens
throughout the area offering tours on
one day in the spring, decided to
adopt some practices from a similar
program in Grey-Bruce to reach a
wider audience and organizer Rhea
Hamilton-Seeger said that she has
high hopes for it.
“The tour is going to be good and
it’s a great educational tool for
people,” she said. “They’re going to
see the gardens of course, and enjoy
the time they get to spend there, but
they’ll get to learn about everything
from mulching to rain barrels to
forest stewardship.”
The tour, which features 30
gardens and eight businesses, spans
all of Huron Perth from
Gowanstown and Stratford in the
east to several gardens along Lake
Huron and from St. Mary’s in the
South to Wingham in the North.
Last year’s event was extremely
successful, according to Hamilton-
Seeger, who said that in their one-
day pilot program, sites welcomed
between 45 and 60 people.
“Klaus [Hamilton-Seeger’s
husband] and I welcomed about 45
people here,” she said. “In Goderich
they had about 60. We figured out
that there was an average of 50
visitors per garden.”
After the event, the group
responsible starting looking for
feedback from both the gardeners
and the visitors and found that
people were interested in several
changes that the group then looked
at implementing.
“From the feedback we got, it was
all good, but there were some
suggestions to make it better,”
Hamilton-Seeger said. “One
suggestion was that we add GPS
coordinates for the gardens to help
people find them, so we did that on
the map. We’ve also paired our sites
with geocaching locations so that
people who want to can incorporate
that in or split up their activities.”
Geocaching is the practice ofhiding small items and finding themthrough the use of GPS coordinates.While all the gardens on the tourare fantastic places to visit,
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A home for snakes
Jacqui Laporte’s Escape from Chaos garden in Auburn, shown here, will feature a lot of
fantastic plants and a home for snakes when the flora begins to flower. The garden is part of
the Huron Perth Undiscovered Garden Tour. (Denny Scott photo)
By Denny Scott
The Citizen
Continued on page 16