Get out your calendars and mark down Sunday, May 3, for the Napa County Master Gardeners’ biannual garden tour. This “Down the Garden Path” tour will feature six of the Master Gardeners’ own gardens, as well as our demonstration garden at Napa’s Connolly Ranch.

This event offers a rare opportunity to see how Master Gardener volunteers put their education and training to work at home. You will also have the chance to learn from the educational displays and garden docents at each site. 

“Down the Garden Path” is a tour different from most, in that these gardens are planned and nurtured by avid gardeners.  Each garden demonstrates the style and heart of the owners, not someone else’s vision.

This year, the tour takes place in and around the City of Napa and will showcase a range from intimate city gardens to an elegant vineyard estate.  Now, all the garden owners are busy with preparations, getting ready to invite you into their private spaces and preparing to show them at their best.

Two of these special gardens are in the East Napa/ Hagen Road area, and they could not be more different. The first surrounds a contemporary Mediterranean home built in 2001. The owners bought the 15-acre property in 1999 to realize their dream of planting a vineyard for a Bordeaux-style wine similar to those they had enjoyed over the years in their visits to France. 

The couple enjoy gardening together and envisioned a landscape that would combine fruit trees, flowers and a vegetable garden, as well as seven acres of Cabernet Sauvignon and one acre of Merlot. Through the years, the garden has grown, not by a grand plan but by decisions made as they worked and got to know their property.

 Starting with rock walls, pillars and planting beds, the garden was developed section by section. Espaliered fruit trees cover several walls, providing color, texture and fruit.  Highlights of the tour will include many climbing roses and clematis, a raised-bed flower garden, a charming stone and brick barbecue area, and a peek into the gorgeous potting shed designed by the owner and built from reclaimed wood, including antique doors purchased in New Orleans.

Master Gardener docents will be on hand to explain aspects of the garden and provide educational materials about the art of espalier.

The second garden is a remodel of an older home on just over one acre. When the owners purchased the property in 1991, there was a small 1920s farmhouse close to the street and an old barn in back, with the rest mostly asphalt and dirt.  A knoll with a large Valley Oak at the back of the propert