This year’s garden tour goes online with a 30-minute video highlighting area gardens

While you won’t be able to step foot into anyone’s yard on the annual garden tour sponsored by the Sedgwick County Extension Center this year, you still can see the yards of four Wichita homes through a free virtual tour starting this weekend.

The tour will make its online debut at 3 p.m. Friday, June 5, on the K-State Research & Extension – Sedgwick County Facebook page (facebook.com/sedgwickextension) through a Facebook Live event. The event will remain accessible on the page if you miss the debut. The videos of each garden will also be made available on the extension center’s website (sedgwick.k-state.edu).

Among the featured gardens are one that was expanded with a variety of rescue plants bought for mere dollars on clearance racks and one that was created to fix problems ranging from poor drainage to poor soils.

When Terry and Gina Moon moved into their northwest Wichita home in 2011, their front and back yards had already been well landscaped and featured several trees ranging from river birches, deodar cedars, a blue atlas cedar and a red maple.

But the Moons have a soft spot for reviving plants and have nearly doubled the number of trees and shrubs, along with perennials, by shopping the clearance racks.

“There’s only one plant we paid full price for,” Gina Moon said. It’s a purple passionflower they purchased at a New Mexico nursery while visiting their son. Over the years, they’ve planted trees and other items purchased for as little as $2.

“Anybody can do gardening on a budget by buying plants on clearance and doing the work on their own,” said Gina Moon.

Not only do the Moons like rehabbing plants, but they also found a way to repurpose some ½-inch thick red structural beams into distinctive planters. The Moons also are hoping the video captured one of Gina’s projects while her hair salon was closed during the COVID-19 shutdown orders: painting rocks to resemble M&M and “SpongeBob SquarePants” characters.

At Mark and Anita Ward’s Eastborough home, many of the features in their yard have been the result of trying to solve problems, Anita Ward said. For example, when the couple moved into their home 25 years ago, the west side of their home received far too much shade and had too much clay soil for anything to grow. During heavy rains, water would come into their basement from that side of the house as well.

So, the couple installed a dry bed with a brick walkway to rectify that problem. To bring some interest and color, they also built a pergola, with wisteria and hanging planters adding some greenery.

As they landscaped their yard — planting mainly shade-tolerant plants such as Japanese yew, maples, dogwood and Nellie R. Stevens holly —they would pile up the clay soil excavated to create the holes for the plants. Eventually they used the clay soil to create the foundation of a berm that they landscaped with large limestones acquired from Anita’s brother and a Winfield farmer who answered Anita Ward’s newspaper ad years ago offering money grass.

Also, on the virtual tour, viewers will see a granddaughter’s efforts to revive and expand the flower garden of her grandmother’s house that had become overgrown by the time the granddaughter and her family moved into the property four years ago. At another garden, a homeowner’s efforts to add layers of texture —with perennials and shrubs such as liriope, boxwoods, euonymus, English ivy and hostas, along with a sweetgum tree and other mature trees — will be featured.

In mid-May, extension agents Rebecca McMahon and Matthew McKernan visited the four gardens to get video footage that they’ve edited down to create the 30-minute videos for the tour.

Because the garden tour is planned at least a year in advance — from finding the homeowners to feature to taking photos of items in bloom —the extension office decided to still offer the tour but through a video format.

The videos may lack some of the aspects garden enthusiasts enjoy during in-person visits, such as identification markers for plants, but “if nothing else, you get a sneak peek for next year,” McKernan said.

Some of this year’s homeowners have agreed to be on next year’s tour again for in-person visits.

The garden tour has traditionally served as the major annual fundraiser for the extension office’s master gardener program, raising on average about $10,000 to $12,000 — about half the program’s operating budget, McKernan said. Because an outdoor revenue-producing event like a garden tour is susceptible to low attendance because of weather, the extension office “operates with a budget that allows us to handle these kinds of situations,” McKernan said.

Donations to the Extension Education Foundation help support the extension office gardening and horticulture programs, which has allowed the extension office to convert its in-person programming has online and free formats.

Virtual garden tour

What: K-State Research and Extension – Sedgwick County annual garden tour offered in a virtual online format of four Wichita gardens.

When: goes live at 3 p.m. Friday (June 5) on the K-State Research & Extension – Sedgwick County Facebook page (facebook.com/sedgwickextension) and will remain available on the page. Videos also will be posted on the extension center’s website.

Cost: Free