I love going to the garden centers to look at the flowers, but it’s hard for me to decide what I want in my garden. Is there any place I can go to visit gardens for ideas? PL

Sometimes it can be difficult to decide which plants would work best in your garden and many of us fall victim to analysis-paralysis as we overthink the options. Thankfully, we not only have great garden centers in town with people who can help you make good decisions about what to purchase for your garden, but we also have several opportunities to visit individual homeowner’s gardens in local garden tours. This is one of the reasons the Tulsa Master Gardeners have a garden tour each year. It’s one thing to see a plant at the nursery, but it’s quite another to see it fully grown and thriving in an actual garden. The garden tour is also a fundraiser that helps supports our programs throughout the county.

The theme of this year’s garden tour is Midtown Havens, and we have five very interesting gardens on the tour this year plus our Demonstration Garden will be open for visitors as well.

One home on the tour is primarily a vegetable garden complete with chickens. Edibles are grown year-round in this garden with raised beds. This gardener has a focus on organic gardening and utilizes IPM (Integrated Pest Management) strategies to help keep the garden healthy for the pets, chickens, and small children who live there. If you ever thought you wanted to start a vegetable garden, touring this garden will inspire you to get started.

One of the other tour gardens contain not only flowers, shrubs, and vegetables, but is also home to a fairy garden. This homeowner’s fairy garden started with three fairies. Since then, the fairy population has expanded to 99 and includes a fairy hospital, a fairy farm, a fairy school, and a fairy nursery. If that wasn’t enough, this one also has a 99-year-old Boston Fern and an old moonshine still left over from prohibition days.

If you are not a fan of mowing the yard, another home on the tour this year has no back lawn but is filled instead with crushed granite paths that wind thorough beds filled with flowers and vegetables.

In addition to the tour homes, the Green Country Master Composter will be sharing information about composting in the Demo Garden at the OSU Extension. And, we will have someone present to sharpen your garden tools for a nominal fee. Both of these activities are Saturday only.

The Midtown Havens garden tour will be June 5^th and 6^th. Advance tickets are available online (www.tulsamastergardeners.org) for $10. We hope to see you there.

You can get answers to all your gardening questions by calling the Tulsa Master Gardeners Help Line at 918-746-3701, dropping by our Diagnostic Center at 4116 E. 15th Street, or by emailing us at mg@tulsamastergardeners.org.