Groundswell garden tours are of gardens designed, built, and maintained by home gardeners. You are seeing the results of the sweat and toil of creative growers. They are generous about sharing all the challenges they have overcome or are still working on; you will learn from their mistakes and their successes.
A Tour of Garden Surprises + a Picnic in the Park Aug 13
Windermere boasts so many beautiful gardens but none more special and more filled with surprises than the 4 gardens on this tour.
• Delight of Dahlias
• Jack in the Bean Stock reality story – if you are lucky you might get a little taste
• Ferns in the sun… are you kidding… 2 completely different environmental zones in one yard.
• Deer deterrents
• Straw Home– environmentally friendly before its time
• Bear’s nest in the garden treetop– yikes!
• She Shed that every woman dreams of
• Planting and maintaining a rock wall garden that is close to vertical – you have to be a mountain goat
• Canoeing in the garden
• Outdoor kitchen and lounge that will make you reluctant to leave.
• And best of all – art in the garden
See details and get ticket
Groundswell Light Festival Dec 15/16 and Dec 22/23, 2023
Watch for the first annual Groundswell Light Festival at the gardens – Dec 15/16 and Dec 22/23 creating food sustainability for the valley.
Add some sparkle to your holiday season with a tour of the greenhouse and gardens – music, food, fires, and fun. Put it on your calendar now and watch for details to unfold.
NOTE: we are looking for volunteers to share their talents with us. Contact: events@groundswellnetwork.ca
get tickets for dec 15
get tickets for dec 16
get tickets for dec 22
get tickets for dec 23
Passed events are below, in Past events posts, and/or in the list of past events.
—————-2023:
Getting Down and Dirty – Old Blue Truck Farm – Dealing with Food Security May 7
In this hands-on workshop you can help prep a row so you have an up close look at Permaculture and what a difference it makes to creating healthy, living soil.
See full post
Plan before Planting – Growing Possibilities – May 18
Before you stick your first seed in the ground this long weekend Jim will take us through the stages of expansion and contraction and how your garden can feed the multitudes or just become a place of peace.
He will share his learnings on how you can start small with pots, move to raised beds, move to hoop houses, and end up with a greenhouse you’ll enjoy all winter.
Nothing goes to waste, it is just reinvented.
See details and buy ticket
Homestead Harvest Market Garden Tour June 17
Local bug expert, compost king, and market gardeners, Lana and Garth, will share their know-how, in a garden tour of a historic homestead and growing food processing business.
You will enjoy new ways of growing strawberries, cantaloupe wearing pantyhose, ask your questions about insects and get a handle on how food goes from the earth to a delicious product that can be eaten all winter.
See details and get ticket
His and Her’s – two different and equally beautiful approaches – June 24
In one garden you will learn from Jane the basics of how you take a Monty Don idea from Small Spaces, Big Dreams, and turn it into your dream garden. Jane will share the basics of preparation, the core elements of English cottage gardens, and how to get started. She will do an orientation on her three years of hand-drawn designs, choosing plants, the principles of organic gardening and how to think about creating drifts of plants, choosing what works for our area, and talking about the combination of perennials and annuals and how to think about transformation on a budget and all that this entails.
And Doug will introduce a different kind of gardening with a similar theme but a totally different ecosystem based on working with glacial silt, plants that do well with dry conditions, and the principles of drip irrigation as a means to transform a large space with minimal water and an emphasis on avoiding weeding, and maximizing effect. He has a degree in horticulture and will speak to techniques like working with shrubs, grasses, and almost xeriscape environments. He will also speak to building standing beds, espalier techniques for fruit tree growing where you can do little maintenance and achieve the effect the Romans developed when they first espalier fruit.
See details
—————-2022:
JULY 9 – Dealing with Garden Challenges – Timber Ridge Garden Tour Saturday, July 9, 2022
This 4 garden tour will open your eyes to the huge dilemmas that home gardeners face and overcome here in the valley: having to literally uproot your garden and move it miles away, dealing with a pothole 6’ deep in your front yard, sandstone slopes along the sides of your garden and adjusting to the challenge & change of gardening alongside house construction next door.
These gardeners have overcome all that and more and they did it themselves.
Come join us and be amazed at their grit and creativity. See full post
July 24 – The Garden Differences – a Windermere Garden Tour Sunday, July 24, 2022
Join us for a day of beauty, possibilities, learning and fun as we tour a variety of different styles of gardens all developed and maintained by home gardeners. Their hands are in the dirt and their hearts are right there too. Your host gardeners will share with you “Why we do what we do!”
At noon we’ll refresh with the perfect picnic from Hopkins Harvest- nutrition packed with a ton of savory flavors. So delicious you’ll feel spoiled. (Includes main, beverage and a treat) See full post
Sept 7 – An Autumn Morning in the Garden!
Yumm… Pumpkin spiced coffee, carrot cake and a garden tour at an Invermere private garden.
See full post