A private garden on the 2023 Gardeners’ Garden Tour.
Purchase your advance tickets for the 30th annual Gardeners' Garden Tour.
The tour features private area gardens as well as open visitation both days at Wing Haven Garden & Bird Sanctuary, SEED Wildlife & Children's Garden, and the Elizabeth Lawrence House & Garden. Be inspired!
Join us the evening before for our preview event, Garden Tour Sip & See (separate ticketed event). Price includes a ticket to the tour.
Title Sponsor Blackhawk Garden Center
Garden Tour Hours: Saturday 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. and Sunday 1:00 - 5:00 p.m.
This event happens rain or shine, and tickets are non-refundable. Proceeds benefit Wing Haven’s gardens and programs.
Advance tickets $30 through 5 p.m. on Friday, April 26. Purchase tickets online or in-person at Wing Haven or Blackhawk Hardware & Garden Center (4225 Park Rd, Charlotte).
Tickets purchased online will be available for pickup at Will Call (248 Ridgewood Ave) during tour hours.
Day-of tickets are $35 and available for purchase at Will Call during the tour hours (10 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday and 1-5 p.m. on Sunday) at Blackhawk Hardware & Garden Center (business hours) and online. Tickets purchased online during the tour can be picked up at Will Call.
Children 10 and under free.
Read more about each garden here. Tour tickets have all of the addresses listed.
Featured Gardens:
Amy Cole
In 2016, I purchased the house from a family who created a thoughtful English garden that included several mature Japanese maples and an English boxwood labyrinth. When it came time to design the garden, I turned to my friend Burch Mixon, who was an incredibly talented landscape designer known for his English-style gardens. There were several significant challenges. The quarter-acre corner lot with house and garage left only small spaces for gardens. The kitchen and den looked out to a circular drive of hundreds of cement pavers and the street. Plus, a giant magnolia blocked sunlight from the primary living spaces.
I’d read Page Dickey’s Inside Out (2000, Harry N. Abrams), which illustrates how garden rooms should flow naturally from the windows and exterior doors of the house. Thanks to Burch, every window looks out onto different gardens and hardscaped spaces enclosed in lush shrubs, vines and perennials. The kitchen and den look out to birdfeeders, hydrangeas, asters, black-eyed Susans, irises, toad lilies, peonies, foxglove and flowering annuals set against a backdrop of hornbeams inside a tea olive hedge. Where the huge magnolia once stood, Burch designed a walled garden with clipped boxwoods, jasmine, creeping fig, flowering perennials and a fountain to buffer street noise.
Laurie & Ned Durden
We started our garden in 2004. It has been a work in progress for over 20 years, and we hope it will be for at least another 20!
Our garden is on a small, narrow lot that has been divided into 'garden rooms'. These rooms are defined with evergreen plants, trees and paving and provide a framework to enjoy the more ephemeral and seasonal moments of the garden. The garden is an extension of the house and unfolds as you move through it. The back porch and breakfast room serve as transitional areas which blur the boundaries between inside and outside. Garden focal points lead visitors further into the garden and the skyline view beyond. I love watching the seasons change. A few of my favorite moments include cutting and sharing lots of spring bulbs, enjoying the fragrant plants—sweetbay magnolia, jasmine, gardenia and osmanthus—and moving things around for a small change each year.
Ellen & Spence Hamrick
When our new home was completed in November 2018, our tiny lot was basically red mud–except for the house, the new shed, and the beautiful 59-year-old oak in the backyard. The vision was to create several low-maintenance “rooms” to complement our small cottage and provide additional living space. Plants were selected to provide year-round interest. Drought-resistant perennials that attract wildlife were chosen in most cases. Some of the prior owner’s daffodils were salvaged and replanted when landscape work began in the spring of 2019. One side of the house has a lush garden path ending in a new stone wall and gate, and the other side has become the service area for utilities.
The raised beds in the front yard provide blueberries for the birds as well as herb garnishes, greens, okra and tomatoes for our dinner table. Much time is spent on our screened porch where we listen to the birds singing and our fountain burbling. The sundial in the front yard grounds us to our family history as it originally stood in Spence’s grandmother’s yard in Shelby, NC. The ‘New Dawn’ climbing roses on the front porch are the same as those from Ellen’s grandmother’s porch in Alamance County.
In spite of some failed experiments, we are close to achieving our original vision!
Davis Ligon
My garden has had many iterations over the course of almost 20 years. The biggest change came in 2017 after a large shade tree was lost and took the front garden from mostly shade to a full sun garden overnight. I worked with landscape architect Laurie Durden to develop a camellia hedge that provides privacy from the street.
Rectangular pavers leading from the street to the front door bisect the front garden and lend a modern feel to a nearly 100-year-old cottage. Parterre boxwood hedges and a simple fountain custom fitted for the space create a courtyard feel and is a favorite feature.
The two side gardens running the length of the house have totally opposite sun exposures. On the left is a woodland-type shade garden with various species of ferns, hostas and cast iron plants. On the right is a sunnier area planted with European hornbeams to balance out the height of the house. American boxwood help to punctuate this long space and frame areas of hydrangeas, roses and annuals.
Hobby & John Sherman
We started our garden in 2017. We wanted the foundation and structure to be laid out in such a way as to mature over time and allow a place for our family to use and enjoy as an extension of our home. The garden consists of two large sections divided by an allée of ‘Autumn Rocket’ camellia and outlined by gravel walkways. We love the clean lines and simplicity of the plantings. While giving a sense of surprise by the creation of different rooms, there is also a sense of calm and structure.
The layout draws the eye down the length of the garden, enabling a view which takes in the full display of our garden while providing expansive views of the borrowed landscape of the tree canopy in the distance. We enjoy adding bulbs for fragrance and color, and have an evolving bed in the lower portion to cultivate and experiment with a cutting garden.
Many Thanks to Our Sponsors
Title Sponsor
Silver Sponsors
Bronze Sponsors
Event Partners
Wing Haven is supported, in part, by the Infusion Fund and its generous donors.
