Sharing highlights from GardenScapes – by Diane Morey Sitton

Imagine! A colorful curbside garden filled with blooms, bees, butterflies and birdhouses; a poolscape accented with plant-filled containers as blue as the water itself; herbs spilling from pots, tubs and strawberry jars; and even deer—as frilly white as daisies– grazing in a front lawn, the work of talented garden club members who crafted them from coffee filters.

It was all part of GardenScapes, a self-guided home and garden tour presented by Kingwood Garden Club, now celebrating its 50th anniversary in the verdant, lake-rich community of Kingwood, some 30 miles north of downtown Houston. The tour takes place every two years.

When you attend the event, like I did a few weeks ago, you know to expect palatial homes, meticulously manicured gardens of various styles, exotic plant collections, and a multitude of outdoor kitchens, gazebos, fire pits and fountains. Kingwood Garden Club members are stationed in the homes and gardens to provide information. There’s a raffle and plant sale.

You also know that you’ll be amused, inspired, and even charmed by the floral creations designed by club members for each specific home and garden. Besides a multitude of tabletop arrangements, this year’s designs included floral bouquets afloat in a swimming pool, a dazzling pink flamingo crafted of flowers and spray-painted palm fronds, a grassy checkerboard with tiny potted plants serving as game pieces, and the previously mentioned trio of snowy-white deer.

Some of the gardens were decorated to illustrate themes. At the Jardin de Fleurs (Garden of Flowers), French traditions intermingled with whimsy. Besides a collection of birdhouses in a “Birdhouse Village” that enlivened the front lawn and a white birdcage spilling with verbena and petunia in the back garden, there was a flower-clad mannequin seated at a lavishly set patio table.

The club members’ talents and creativity were on display at another garden, as well, an inviting landscape containing a pool with a cascading water slide, tropical tiki hut, backyard putting green, and dramatic fire pit. In all, club members twisted, curled and clipped some 4,000 coffee filters into flowers that covered a “garden bed” like a frothy white coverlet, that tumbled down the water slide like blue-green paint spilling from an upturned can, that formed wall arrangements, and that even accented the garden club aprons worn by the docents.

Real flowers lured tour goers to another garden, rich with hardy native species known to survive freezes and hot, dry summers, and to attract birds, bees and butterflies. In addition to the long sun-splashed border outside the fence at curbside, there was a showy side garden filled with perennials and pollinators inside the fence. Colorful, hand-painted fence murals added to the color.

White-flowering impatiens set the calming color theme at the entrance of another home and garden where monochromatic neutrals dominated. In keeping with the cool theme, features of the patio included white cast-iron furniture, a fountain, and a lavish tablescape topped with gray-green succulents.

Like most garden tours, proceeds from GardenScapes and the accompanying plant sale and raffle are used to help fund educational, horticultural, and beautification projects. Learn more about Kingwood Garden Club at: kingwoodgardenclub.org.