The event is the 61st annual West Avenue Garden Tour. Here you'll find lots of ideas to incorporate into a city, suburban or country garden, and even a balcony, condo garden or rooftop garden. There are traditional clipped boxwood hedges and heirloom roses along with eclectic touches such as fruit-bearing fig and banana trees, koi ponds, espaliered camellias, herbs and roses, according to Natalie Greenberg, tour chairman.
Some gardeners come up with surprises to entertain visitors.
Last year's garden tour featured a miniature golf course and a model train hauling flowers. There also will be refreshments and live jazz music from 3 to 5 p.m. West Avenue will be closed to traffic. Gardens open at 1 p.m. In preparation for the garden tour there is an alley cleanup and hot-dog party, then a yard sale the Saturday before where one of the people on the street who owns a farm sells plants and flowers. We have judging on the day of the garden tour and nonresidents judge the gardens.