Outdoor Living & Garden Tour set for Saturday, June 15

 Some of the most beautiful gardens and outdoor living spaces in Weiser will be on display in June during the Outdoor Living and Garden Tour, presented by the Treasure Valley Community College Foundation.

 It is the first time the long-running event has come to Weiser.

 The self-guided tour, which will feature nine different properties in Weiser, is set for Saturday, June 15 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

 Tickets are $20 per person, with funds benefiting the foundation’s scholarship fund and student support services. 

 They are available at Andrews Seed and Red Apple Marketplace in Ontario, as well as Weiser Classic Candy, Rustic Ranch Nursery, and The Market in Weiser.

 Tickets can also be purchased by visiting www.tvcc.cc/foundation. 

 “One thing that is new to the tour is, everybody who buys a ticket will be entitled to sign up for a raffle,” TVCC Foundation board member Dave Bean told the Signal American. “We’ve got certificates from Rustic Ranch, The Market, and Andrews Seed. We put some money toward the certificates and the businesses matched the funds we put in, so we doubled the value.”

 Three certificates, one from each business, will be drawn following the June 15 event.

 “The winners, of course, will be notified, but we will post them on the TVCC Foundation website so those who are interested can see who won,” Bean added.

 Bean, who is also a Weiser Architectural Preservation Committee board member, said that the Weiser Train Depot, which recently started its own native plant garden with a grant from the Idaho Native Plant Society, will be on the garden tour with the building open to participants so they can see some the new additions to the depot’s interior walls.

 Thanks to a $2,500 Community Enhancement Grant from the Idaho State Historical Society, the depot board recently enlarged and framed pages from a Weiser historical train brochure, which includes a map, and hung them on the walls of the depot. 

 It will be the first opportunity for the public to see them. WAPC guides will be on hand to answer questions about the depot. 

 Tour participants will receive a brochure, complete with map guiding them to each property, and can start their tour wherever they prefer, but it might be logical to start at the Weiser Train Depot and move on from there.

 Those with tickets can visit each of the nine Weiser gardens and living spaces where they can see what property owners have planted and designed. 

 All of them have their own specific themes and could serve to spark ideas for participants’ own outdoor spaces.

 “The brochures have little blurbs on all nine places,” noted Bean who said he expects more than two hundred participants. “The garden hosts have written up what they wanted to say about their place and that’s partly what’s interesting about it. Each one has a unique story to tell.” 

 He added that most of the tour hosts plan on being on site to answer questions and discuss their gardens and outdoor living spaces. Restrooms will be available at the train depot.

 “At one place, they totally renovated their house and their vision was to have a cottage garden that is a mix of plants and flowers, as well as a produce garden incorporated right in, and minimal grass that you have to mow,” Bean explained.

 Another was themed more with a park in mind, with masses of trees and plants, and a hard-scape design.

 “One of them, their home was built in 1907; the interesting twist on the place is that they are a ranch family, so they brought in artifacts from their ranch and repurposed them in their yard, so it has all kinds of unique farm items that serve as part of its core,” Bean said. “To me, that’s an important element with the places we have for people to come see – variety. 

 “We go from a semi-public, historic train depot where people go to have events to fairly formal-looking gardens to ones that are rustic. There is just a wide spectrum of gardens; that’s just the way it turned out this year.” The foundation funds over $300,000 in scholarships and support services for students every year.

 “There are quite a number of folks from the Weiser area who come to TVCC to get their education, so it’s great the garden tour has come here,” Bean noted. “It’s interesting to see the gardens and outdoor setups that people come up with and it’s for a really good cause. It’s a fun and worthwhile activity.”

 For information, call (541) 881-5586, or email 1meyer@tvcc.cc or cyasuda@tvcc.cc.