Calling all plantsmen, nurserywomen, growers, horticulturists, seedsmans, omnivores, fruitarians, apiarists, outdoorspeople, nemophiles, sodfathers and lawnisseurs (did we forget anyone?): The Boulder Garden Tour returns this weekend, offering an inside peek into some of the most beautiful privately owned gardens in the city.
For the past two decades, minus a two-year pandemic hiatus, the annual Boulder Garden Tour has educated the wider community on all things green — from sustainable gardening practices to fostering pollinator habitats, the tour offers a chance for attendees to connect with nature, learn from local experts and steal some garden inspo for their own backyards.
Formerly called the Whittier Mapleton Garden Tour, the event took place in the University Hill neighborhood for years, but this year will return to its Mapleton Hill roots. From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, in honor of its 20th anniversary, the Boulder Garden Tour invites guests to spend a sunny Saturday exploring private gardens and homesteads on a self-guided tour in the historic neighborhood (where the tour took place in the early 2000s).
But the Boulder Garden Tour is more than just a mere educational stroll around Mapleton Hill: The event also serves a philanthropic purpose, with all proceeds benefiting Garden to Table, an organization dedicated to empowering Boulder County’s youth through hands-on garden education. By snagging a ticket to the Garden Tour, participants contribute directly to garden management, curriculum development and training for over 6,000 students annually across 16 local schools. From north Boulder, south to Broomfield, and from the foothills east to Lafayette, Garden to Table provides experiential, garden-based learning for students.
“There’s a lot of excitement to bring the tour back to Mapleton Hill, both from tour-goers who have been to the past events, and from homeowners who are excited to show off their homes and gardens again,” said Lindsey LeCuyer, executive director at Garden to Table. “Mapleton Hill is one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in Boulder, and anyone who has ever been in that area knows that there is some pretty spectacular gardening going on.”
Indeed, it’s hard to walk around Mapleton Hill without craning your neck to get a peek into the backyards of some of the iconic Colonial Revival and Victorian-style homes in the neighborhood. For a $27 ticket, guests can get up close and personal with the gardens — and save themselves some neck pain.
Mapleton Hill resident Tila Duhaime is thrilled to invite tourgoers into her garden. An avid gardener and New York City transplant, Duhaime said she inherited her green thumb from her grandmother.
“My grandma was born in the (Great) Depression era and the Dust Bowl, where growing your own food was a way to survive,” Duhaime said. “She taught me everything she knew.”
Duhaime said she believes that garden and agricultural education have disappeared in modern America — which is why organizations like Garden to Table are vital in rekindling interest among students and children.
“Americans have a pretty long history of gardening for themselves that has vanished,” Duhaime said. “This lack of understanding of the lifecycle of plants and where your food comes from is a little alarming to me. Organizations like Garden to Table aren’t just teaching people, but also indoctrinating the youth — normalizing gardening, imparting understanding on where food comes from and teaching kids how to listen to plants and nurture them.”
She added: “Plants can’t talk, but it’s a different kind of communication — plants will tell you if they’re happy by their leaf color, or by the kind of fruit they are bearing, or the quality of their blooms. Learning how to care for, listen to and live in symbiosis with plants is essential to the human species. A lot of Americans these days are so separated from that. So programs like [Garden to Table] is, in my mind, remarkable — and essential to a complete education.”
Duhaime’s verdant love and understanding of plants is evident throughout her garden — which she tends alongside her husband Steven Phillips. In a quarter of an acre, their planted area garden includes two side gardens of shade-loving plants, a front garden with wild grasses and perennials and a terraced backyard garden. Their gardens are all fed by a low-water demand system called drip irrigation.
Guests can peruse all four garden areas, though the crown jewel of Duhaime’s garden is perhaps the rear garden, planted on a steep hillside in stone terraces. The lush space is dotted with fruit trees, one large berry patch, spring bulbs and a dedicated vegetable bed, with various other plants sprinkled throughout.
Duhaime’s approach to gardening is both welcoming and laid-back — she and her husband use no pesticides and allow plants to grow where they feel comfortable, creating a diverse, abundant, and harmonious space that attracts everything from painted lady butterflies to broad-tailed hummingbirds.
“I tend not to pull things up unless they are dandelions or invasive weeds,” Duhaime said. “But some things pop up all over that I just let grow, even if I didn’t plant them there originally — like right now, there’s some oregano that migrated over that is just thriving. And in one area, there’s an iris that’s decided to come up between two stones. Throughout the whole garden, a lot of my plants are volunteers — if they have decided they want to grow there, then fine. They’re welcome to live there, as long as they can survive. It creates a gorgeous ecosystem.”
Garden tour guests can look forward to seeing outdoor spaces that vary from rigidly manicured, to more loosely enforced, like Duhaime’s, and everything in between. In addition to touring the gardens, visitors will also be treated to what Garden to Table calls “edutainment” — a mixture of education and entertainment on topics related to sustainable gardening and yard care, such as native plants, backyard birds, regional seed banks, soil health, beekeeping and pollinator habitats. Food trucks and refreshments will be on site throughout the tour, because garden touring is always more fun on a full stomach.
Garden to Table is a nonprofit that is an official partner of Boulder Valley School District and provides garden designs, seeds and seedlings, irrigation repair, garden check-ups, teacher and parent volunteer training, community workdays, teaching supplies, online scheduling tools and all necessary curriculum resources to each partner school.
Garden to Table also works closely with district curriculum staff to ensure its modules align with district academic priorities and schedules. The nonprofit received a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant in 2022, which expires on Sunday.
Lecuyer said the past two years of the grant allowed Garden to Table to completely update its curriculum and to offer three or four lessons per year, as opposed to formerly offering only one lesson per season.
“We have had an overall 45% increase in student touchpoints with the garden since implementing this new curriculum, and at our Title 1 schools we had a 185% increase in student visits to gardens,” Lecuyer said. “In 2023, 96% of teachers reported students experienced an increase in physical activity, exposure to vegetables and nutrition concepts and positive states of mind.”
In addition, Lecuyer said the funding helped support a garden educator to lead lessons, rather than having an overworked school teacher take on the curriculum.
Lecuyer said through events like the Boulder Garden Tour, the nonprofit hopes to raise enough funding to continue to grow the Garden Educator program.
“Our goal is to eventually grow the program so that there can be garden educators not just at our Title 1 schools, but at every school,” Lecuyer said. “We want to be able to grow our budget and grow our staff so that everyone has access to a meaningful educational and hands-on experience with cultivation.”
For more information on Garden to Table, its mission, or to donate to the nonprofit directly, visit gardentotable.org. For tickets and details on this weekend’s Boulder Garden Tour, visit bouldergardentour.com.
