Hopefully they aren't snotty critical gardeners. :) I've been on our tour a couple of times and everyone was understanding of the weeds! And the first year i was on, all my Asiatic lilies bloomed really early and the Orientals hadn't bloomed yet. What do i have most of in my garden?? Lilies, of course!

Good luck!

North you will be fine from the glimpse of pictures I have seen. If you have any problems have them sign up for the "clearing by mouth" event at my gardens.

BTW I don't think anything beats iris, lily and rose bush foliage even if they aren't in bloom.

I'd wish you luck but you don't need it. :)

SCG

I have been thinking of your dilemma since you first posted. Worrying about whether you will have flowers or not what about some annuals in planters? Some garden stores are having their clearance sales and that could bring in some extra color if you needed.

I've been thinking that too, to fill in the bare spots. Like where the tulips were. I have planters of annuals on my patio at the back (where the garden tour won't be) that I plan to move to the front temporarily. I've been cruising the gardens and gauging what will be in bloom - roses, maybe; delphs, maybe; penstemon, maybe; liatrus, yes; scabiosa, yes... on and on.

I think the lily damage will be minimal. The two hardest hit haven't lost their buds. I'm more scared of the garden tour than poop-covered larvae so I was hand picking with no gloves tonight. :S

Annuals really make a nice difference. I bought a lot of them as fillers when my yard was on the tour. People like to see a lot of containers too, i think, and i had a lot of them. They're good to put in bare spots or to hide something that's not-so-pretty. Of course, then you have to water the darn things! LOL

You're braver than me. They're trying to organize a garden tour here this summer, but I'm too chicken. There are days when my garden looks nice, but others where I think everything looks awful.

But I've gone on garden tours and enjoyed every garden. They all have some unique feature that I could admire. People will focus on what is looking good. Every gardener understands that perennials have a limited bloom period. I'm sure you'll have a positive experience.

A gardening friend of mine once told me that "if you think you have your weeds under control you most definitely don't have enough gardens"

You will be fine and I would love to see photos.... heck I will even share too :) lol

SCG

Yes do share photos

"There are days when my garden looks nice, but others where I think everything looks awful."

We are our own worse critics. :)

I don't really have a weeds problem. Now that I have a riding lawn mower I have a lot more time for weeding. I'm just worried that my garden is small, boring, bare and out of bloom. My hostas look good this year but they haven't really filled in yet. I started a new bed this spring with a boulder and three roses that will be monsters but are so far little twigs, so it's a lot of bare soil. I also have an ugly portion in the south corner with a bunch of orange daylilies, caragana, an unwelcome elm sapling and some other assorted weeds. I hope people don't look at it.

The south side of my front door needs digging out and the soil replacing. It's full of invasive things that came with the house. I think I'll have time to do this before the tour but I'm not sure what I'll put there in the meantime.

With pictures we will better be able to help you :-)

Gillian, if you're really freaking out here's something you could do....

Take pictures of the blooms on the plants that won't be blooming when you have the tour, and put the pictures beside the plants when people are there. Maybe attach them to some sort of plant tag or something. Be creative :)

Lynn

That is a very cool idea.

I'm now imagining myself crafting tissue paper flowers and sticking them on. LOL.

I'll post some pics a bit later. I mostly upload them to Facebook now because it only takes one tap right from my phone. So lazy...

All the effort one goes though is osmething else for sue to be pat of a garden tour

I put my house and gardens in Barrie Ontario on the COmmunities in Bloom happening, across canada and in other countries

I really enjoyed it last year and my gardens look good this year.

They post a nice sign out in front of the house so people walking and driving by can see. As I am often out in the front , side or back people can often see me working away and stop by to chat. Lots of times we do have good visit nod of course I don't i mind at all if they like to have a look at the gardens.
Generally it is a one on one o two people or what but sort of one and one and you can talk about things in the garden. I try to have something or other potted up, or some seeds or cuttings something that people can take with them if they ask.

I take the sign down, well after maybe three weeks.
And they put on get together for all the people involved with guest speakers and a good lunch for all.

Guess you can tell I am proud of my gardens

Okay here are photos. I've kept them wide so you can see the general impressions and not individual plants.

This is my new hosta bed, everything is pretty young in here. There are aruncus and some large hostas near the middle which will hopefully provide some dimension in future years.

Next to that, I just dug this this spring and brought in the boulder. There are 3 baby roses and since taking the photo I added 2 heucheras and a delphinium. It looks sparse but way better than the junk that was there before.

This has some big daylilies and verbascum that will probably be blooming for the tour. Hopefully. There are lots of roses in here but mostly once bloomers.

This the back half of that bed, with big delphs and some tall roses you can't really see, and some young roses and a weigela. The white stuff is dianthus.

This is the north side of the house, with some different ligularias, hostas and primulas.

Here's a little bed by the sidewalk with some dayliles, geum and gross potentillas. Also there is a dianthus in here that is almost a florist's carnation. It's nice.

Rose and peony bed - this won't look like much but the other side is all daylilies.

This is the other side with daylilies and lilies which will hopefully be in bloom.

This is sort of the side yard with some daylilies and stuff.

My vegetable gardens with the cool trellis I built for the pole beans. I'm really glad I renovated my cotoneaster hedge this spring because it looks fab now.

This is a little kind of back thing with a Blue Boy rose that is going nutters this year (12 blooms at once), polemonium that you can't really see, and the dianthus and tunies are in a giant concrete bowl planter. I need to fill something in in front. The cedar used to be a globe but the deer turned it into a mushroom in the winter. :/

Bed by my driveway has lots of lilies, heuchera, peonies, a ninebark, scabiosa and daisies. Most of these will be blooming I hope.

Thanks for letting me try out my garden tour on you...

It all looks good! Of course, the rose and peony bed looks the best right now, but the others will be just as nice when they're blooming.

In the last picture, are those alliums on the left? What kind? My alliums did nothing this year - one bloom.

Marcia, those are those big, later alliums. Can't remember the name. They are reliable every year. NONE of my smaller alliums in the front yard did a thing. I think I had maybe 2 blooms out of 50 bulbs at a guess. I thought it was just me!

I have Purple Sensation. It was not sensational this year. I also have Christophii which has been great over the years, but never bloomed at all this year. Yours look pink. Are they?

No those are their seed heads. I think these are christophii also.

You have lots of great, healthy looking plants with thought put into placement. Good bones, too. It's not all about blooms, you know. Stuff is going to fill in more every day. Re.Lax. Your gonna do great.

BTW, I think I lost my breath for a moment when I saw that perfect Ligularia. Beautiful.

Thanks Pudge! That ligularia was dirt cheap at the end of the year, I was so lucky. I need to show you my new one, I got a cut leaf Japanese one too.

Holy cow! You have a massive yard and it's full of awesome plants. I love the shape of your various beds.

Hmmm. My Purple Sensation were sensational this year. They're up against the foundation of the house though, so maybe that has something to do with it.

You sure can tell you have put a lot of work into your gardens they are beautiful. Can't wait to see pics of your babies when they grow up.

I like the shape of the beds too. Mine are a mix of straight lines, circles and rounded shapes but more regularly rounded.

Pudge, i noted that ligularia too - mine always seem to wilt no matter how much they're watered. The one in more sun is mulched to try to keep the moisture in, but it still needs a lot of water. The other two are under some trees so they don't wilt so much.

North I don't see why you are worried. They look fabulous! They are also far from small. I would be extremely happy to have what you do.

SCG

Gillian, Did I miss your report on the gardening tour? I hope you had fun with it. I had a yard sale this morning and ended up with a lot of garden type people. It was enjoyable to show them around the yard and I got rid of some extra perennials too.

I forgot to update! It was fun and my yard looked okay... a lot of people seemed to be impressed with my vegetable gardens and a few people asked about the roses even though they were out of bloom. I went on the rest of the tour and the gardens were all so different... some huge properties with expensive formal landscaping and mostly annuals, I figured those people didn't know much about plants but they are nice in their way. And there were a couple of very small and extremely dense yards, which I always find interesting. Kitsch vs. serious, annuals vs. perennials, expensive vs. DIY, there was something for everyone. The out of town portion is on Tuesday.

I am so glad that it went well! I would never have the guts to sign up my garden for something like this, so I am very impressed that you did! Now you can take a deep breath and relax... :-) Congrats!

Yeah...and showing it to us!
Looks like you live in one of my favored area, [mature large trees] your garden looks wonderful and you can be proud!

Glad to hear the tour went well for you. After seeing the pictures, I knew that it would. Lots of interesting shapes and sizes and a veggie garden to boot is always welcome.

I think that most people, especially in garden clubs, are better at visualizing how the plants will look in bloom, or when they reach maturity, than we give them credit for.

Thanks for the follow-up, Gillian. I'm not surprised it was a success for you. As others have said, you have interesting beds. I especially liked how you didn't try to make that new bed symmetrical (the one with the sidewalk around it). I like how you made that little jut off to the side with the big rock. I love that rock.

As for the tour it was nice that you could just continue on to see the other gardens.
We had a different type of garden tour here this summer. It was more of an artsy type thing, with the gardens being the back drop to art and music and such. I didn't enter my yard, mainly because I wouldn't have been able to go visit the other gardens. They just scheduled it from 9-5 and people just went whenever and wherever they wanted.

So now that you've done it, do you think you'd do it again? Was it a rewarding experience?

Thanks for the kind words all.

Marie, we had the second half of the garden tour tonight (rural) and again it was a big mixture of different types of gardens. I saw some new plants I hadn't seen before and learned a couple of things. I would do it again, but if I do it won't be for several years. I would need to feel that my garden had changed significantly and people would see something new.

My old garden club had the same type of tour as yours. They had volunteers sit at each house and they weren't the homeowner which was odd because we often couldn't answer any questions.