Saturday, 18 July 2015
Music in the Gardens Tour, Long Beach Peninsula
a benefit for the Water Music Festival and music programs in local schools
Garden 3: Mimosa Garden (Holtermann Garden
Waving tropical fish flags greet you as you begin your tour of an art-filled patio garden with colorful pots, choice and well-grown plants, and a wall pocket of textured succulents. Stroll through the full-sun gardens wrapping around the this dune-facing home, which well meets all the challenges of the wind, fog and salt air. Enjoy the many spots to sit, a working potting bench, and a small kitchen garden.
This aerial photo taken by local photographer Bob Duke with the aid of his drone show how close the garden is to the dunes:

on a pre-tour visit June 1st (when we just looked at the garden from here, as we were making a spontaneous drive-by)
The garden had looked just as perfect when Nancy and I visited on July 3rd to get some “sneak peek” photo for the tour’s Facebook page as it did on tour day. I noticed how well-grown the plants are. Just two days before the tour, Pat’s husband sent us this photo captioned “Working through the pain to get ready for the garden tour.” Pat had hurt her leg and was continuing the preparation on crutches. Because the garden already looked so fine, it was not the disaster it would have been for someone like me whose garden is not perfected till about one day before a tour.
Our Kathleen toured the garden in the late afternoon and found Barbara Bate playing piano on the west patio.

succulent pocket garden on pre-tour visit, July 3rd (lower right corner: Petunia ‘Pretty Much Picasso’
When we were there in the morning, Barbara Bate was playing in the north side garden. For her second set, she moved into the sun where Kathleen found her later on.

Allan’s photo “They were talking Beethoven while Barbara Bate was playing him some samples by memory.”
As in all the gardens, I wished for more time to sit and enjoy the music. I have a soft spot for Barbara, who played at my mother’s memorial at Golden Sands and who knew her favourite song, Because (you come to me with naught save love, and hold my hand, and lift mine eyes above…).
Every now and then, I run across a garden blogger who lists all sorts of garden descriptive phrases we are not supposed to use anymore because they’ve become passé (“architectural foliage” is one, and “garden rooms” is another). Well, too bad, because here is a great example of architectural foliage in a garden room. Each section of this garden is enclosed by a fence, a dense planting, or the wall of the house or a shed and it is like a series of outdoor rooms.
Here’s that aerial photo again; you can pick out the white daisies and the gunnera in the corner.
Another aerial photo shows the garden shed and another enclosed nook near the front driveway.
The weather was so scorching hot that some plants were wilting, so garden owner John began to water.
The Mimosa Garden was a close contender for my favourite 2015 tour garden because of the garden rooms, the whimsical decorations, and the selection of interesting and well grown plants. To be a contender, a garden must have art that tells me something about the owner, must have more garden than lawn, and must not be a barkscape; the plants must touch and intermingle.