Welcome back to garden tour season! This year’s first tour is all about memory, experimentation, and the way gardens quietly evolve alongside the people who tend them. Across these three spaces, you’ll find gardeners at different stages of their journey: a newer gardener who is experimenting as they learn about their property, a more experienced gardener evolving a property with a long family history, and an experienced, semi-retired professional gardener who has recently transformed her garden space. All are united by their willingness to try new things and let their gardens lead the way.
Join us on the evening of Tuesday, June 9th, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., rain or shine, to explore these beautiful outdoor spaces!
A reminder that GardenKitchener Garden Tours are open to active (2026) members only. If you need to purchase a 2026 membership, you can do so online here, or in-person at Garden A (74 Viewmont Close) on June 9th. In-person memberships will be cash-only – please bring exact change to help keep the process simple.
A map of the three locations can be found here. Please note that one of the locations for this tour is a bit separate from the other two. We recommend planning to drive or cycle, and starting at Garden A (74 Viewmont Close) to make your route easier. Ample street parking is available at each location.
The June 2026 Garden Tour features the following gardens:
Garden A: 74 Viewmont Close
*2026 GardenKitchener memberships available here!
Our first garden belongs to a lifelong gardener who describes the practice as her “zen.” A graduate of St. Clair College’s Landscape Technician Program, Jill spent 33 years working for the City of Windsor before moving to Kitchener in 2019. She didn’t know many people in KW when she first arrived, but credits local gardening groups like GardenKitchener and Grand Gardeners with helping her build her now-strong community of close friends.
When she arrived at this property, there were many well-established, mature trees and shrubs, including a white crabapple, three blue spruces, and ten cedars. While the trees have remained, the actual garden beds needed extensive work, and she began a large-scale transformation of the space in 2022. She declared it “finished” last fall, but like most gardeners, she continues to make adjustments, adding and moving plants here and there. Her latest addition is a golden bleeding heart – she’s wanted one for many years, as it was the only dicentra that she didn’t yet own.
Jill describes her garden’s style as “floral chaos.” It’s a mix of everything: natives, hybrids, and even some plants that many gardeners would try to avoid, including “aggressive” species such as sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum), a favourite ground cover, and Silver Beacon lamium, which was on the property before she arrived. She’s unapologetic about her approach and dedicated to making her garden space a true representation of her story. Many of the plantings are deeply personal, having travelled with her from previous homes, been gifted to her by friends, or planted in memory of a loved one. The weeping larch (Larix pendula), which is visible from the gate to the back garden, was originally at her stepdaughter’s mother’s home. Both women have passed, giving it exceptional meaning. The Stewart pseudocamellia in the front landscaping near the driveway was a gift from friends in tribute to her sister. She’s lovingly named him ‘Rod.’
Adding even more depth to her garden space, Jill believes in “zero-dollar gardening.” She regularly adopts free plants from Facebook Marketplace and isn’t afraid to pick up discarded landscaping materials or objects from a curb. Most of the stone you’ll see in her garden was either repurposed from another location or sourced for free.
Jill’s favourite gardening advice: “Always do ALL of your spring cleanuap before starting another project.”
Garden B: 52 Bound Brook Crt
Our second gardener, Charles, moved into his property with his family in 2018. He inherited a green space filled with mature trees, shrubs, and low-maintenance garden beds. While some of the plants were thriving, many had been left to do their own thing for years and had become overgrown or were dying back. Since moving in, Charles has gradually been redesigning the entire space – replacing tired shrubs, pulling out invasives, and expanding and connecting the garden beds to create a more natural flow throughout the yard.
Charles still sees himself as new to gardening, and he approaches it with curiosity and creativity. He treats his garden like a canvas, constantly looking for new ways to add colour and texture. His goal is to create a space that is as colourful and interesting as possible in every season. This is one of the reasons why Japanese maples appeal to him so much. You’ll find quite a few of these trees on his property – he loves the way the lace-style leaves look when they move in the wind and how the colours of many varieties change so drastically with the seasons, yet remain bright and vibrant.
Many of his Japanese maples are still quite young because of how pricey the mature trees can get. Charles also knows that some varieties aren’t as hardy as others and would prefer to try them out as seedlings rather than risk losing a mature tree. He has an eye on the future when he plants them – a space surrounded by colour, texture, and movement. Currently, his collection includes ‘Autumn Moon’ (Acer shirasawanum ‘Autumn Moon’), ‘Waterfall’ (Acer palmatum var. dissectum ‘Waterfall’), ‘Crimson Queen’ (Acer palmatum var. dissectum ‘Crimson Queen’), ‘Bloodgood’ (Acer palmatum ‘Bloodgood’), ‘Ilarian’ (Acer palmatum ‘Ilarian’), and ‘Osakazuki’ (Acer palmatum ‘Osakazuki’) varieties.The Autumn Moon was a gift from his late mother-in-law, making it very meaningful.
Family is at the heart of many of Charles’s gardening choices. As a father of two daughters, he hopes the colours in the garden will inspire a love of nature and the outdoors in them. Just inside the backyard gate, you’ll find a thriving raspberry patch that has been expanded to keep up with demand from enthusiastic berry pickers. The vegetable beds in the back include some blueberry bushes as well. Carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, and other family favourites have been planted, with nearby milkweed and native plants – many sourced from the Rockway Gardens Plant and Bulb Sale – attracting pollinators to the area.
The property’s front garden follows a more restrained colour palette than the back. Here, Charles plants only in shades of white, pink, and purple – his wife’s favourite colours. Their agreement was simple: Charles could do whatever he liked in the backyard, as long as the front garden reflected her tastes.
Charles is always willing to try something new, whether that’s experimenting with a plant’s location, tackling pests and diseases, or trying techniques like air grafting. He’ll be the first to tell you that he’s still learning, and that’s exactly what he enjoys most about gardening – sharing ideas, learning from others, and watching the garden evolve one season at a time.
Charles’ favourite gardening advice: “Think about the long game. If you’ve got a vision for how you want your space to look in five years, go for plants that need a bit of time and effort to get there. It’s more work upfront, but it pays off over time, and if something doesn’t work out, you haven’t lost as much investment.”
Garden C: 40 Edinburgh Road
Before Hollie moved to the property with our third garden fourteen years ago, it belonged to her grandparents and was the setting for many childhood memories. Over time, the front yard has evolved, and four years ago she took a long-awaited bold step by transforming it into a winding tapestry of flowers, flagstone pathways, and personal touches.
Hollie’s garden is eclectic, sentimental, and always changing. It’s a cottage-esque collection of roses, irises, poppies, cosmos, snapdragons (Antirrhinum majus), echinacea, bachelor’s buttons (Centaurea cyanus), and more, with creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum), common thyme (Thymus vulgaris) and clover (Trifolium spp.), filling in the gaps between flagstones. A birch tree, planted by Hollie the year she moved in, anchors one corner and provides a break from the sun. Two unique iron artifacts, a large cauldron and a horse-shaped hitch post, add interest to the other side. Both were crafted by a relative, delivered to Hollie’s grandmother in 1967, and remain in the same places they were originally installed. Hollie’s grandmother would fill the cauldron with geraniums every year, and Hollie usually chooses to mix it up, but this year she’s followed suit by planting geraniums that she over-wintered, along with Silver Falls spillers (‘Silver Falls’ dichondra). She also propagated those geraniums, and more can be found in the window box.
Like the iron pieces, many of the other plants and objects in Hollie’s garden carry memories. The peonies once belonged to her grandmother. A large rose bush in another corner is a recently gifted transplant from a longtime neighbour. A bird bath was gifted from a friend’s yard. She describes her space as a ‘time capsule,’ with reminders of connections everywhere she looks.
For Hollie, gardening is all about play and experimentation. Her garden is where she recharges and doesn’t need to worry about perfection. Every year seems to bring a new plant obsession with it: last year she couldn’t get enough roses (including a David Austin cultivar, ‘Midas Touch’ hybrid tea rose, and a brand-new ‘Don Juan’ climbing rose against the trellis arch). This year it’s irises – she loves their endless colour combinations and has fun sourcing new additions via online gardening communities.
The focal point of Hollie’s backyard is a mature crabapple tree that her uncle planted when she was a child. She has fond memories of climbing it with her cousins, and the first thing she did when she moved to the property was climb it again. Next to the tree, you’ll also find Hollie’s raised vegetable beds. She has over 200 bulbs of garlic growing and is also growing cucumbers, cucamelons, peas, beans, and Brussels sprouts. Most of these Hollie started herself, but the Brussels sprouts were a gift from a client.
Visitors are encouraged to begin in the front yard and follow the winding flagstone paths through the different sections of the space. (Please note that some of the flagstones are uneven, so tread carefully!)
Hollie’s favourite gardening advice: “Experiment! Learn from your mistakes and experiences. A plant will always try to grow. Where you put it is a risk, but it mostly ends with a reward.”