Garden tour seeks displays

The Green River Pond and Garden Tour has been proving it's not impossible to grow things or maintain nice gardens in Wyoming for the past 24 years.

This year the annual tour will take place the first Saturday in August, but before then Lyneen Murphy, the tour's organizer, is hoping to add a few more stops to the list of houses showing off their ponds and gardens. There are no strict requirements to join the tour, so anyone with any kind of garden, landscaping or lawn work can add their home to the list.

"Whatever you have done that you're proud of, I want to show that," Murphy said.

Whether it's perennial gardens, vegetable gardens, raised bed gardening, composting ideas, water features or any other type of landscaping, if you have it and are willing to share it, Murphy would like to add it to the tour. The more variety the better since having lots of different types of gardens and landscapes will give visitors on the tour more information and ideas on things they can add to their homes.

"We would love to have a home with chickens," Murphy said, thinking about the new ideas she hopes to add to the tour. She believes being able to see how chickens can be raised in a safe, clean, unobtrusive way would be helpful to others interested in the idea and would show that "backyard chickens are pretty cool."

Murphy hopes to have up to 12 houses as part of the tour, which would fill it out but give visitors time to get to all of them in the six-hour timeframe, especially if the tour includes houses in both Green River and Rock Springs as it has in the past. To reach this number, however, she still needs more participants, and invites anyone to contact her if they're interested in showing off their landscaping.

"There's no competition here," Murphy added, stressing the gardens don't have to be perfect or professional to be included in the tour.

Those who have participated in the tour in the past have come away with rewarding experiences, especially through the connections they've made with people who share the same interests in gardening and landscaping. Murphy explained the homeowners who are part of the tour and the visitors who come to their yards are able to share their failures and successes, exchange ideas and even swap seeds and plants.

"It's just the interaction with the community that I believe everybody is drawn to," she said.

Murphy admitted some people have hesitated to have their homes be part of the tour, expressing concern over having hundreds of strangers come through their yard and worrying something could be stolen or destroyed. However, Murphy stressed this has never happened in the past.

"As long as I've been doing this, I've never had that problem," she said, explaining she's never heard of anything being taken, and even visitors who come with children keep them under control and make sure nothing is broken. "People are very respectful," she added.

For both those who share their houses and those who visit all the houses, the Pond and Garden Tour offers a way to learn about what can be done to create beautiful and useful yards in Sweetwater County.

The tradition of visiting gardens in the community began in 1998 when Lamar and Eileen Green and Wiley and Toni Morgan wanted to show others their backyard ponds. They got together with other friends who had ponds to exchange ideas, and before long they decided to expand and share their interests and ideas with other members of the community. The pond tour took off and became an annual event.

Eventually the Greens retired and moved to Florida, at which point Murphy, who had been involved for several years, was asked to take over the event. She didn't say yes right away, knowing how much work organizing a tour would take, but she eventually decided to just try it out and has been running it ever since.

The Green River Pond Tour, which started with just ponds, became the Green River Pond and Garden Tour, allowing those without ponds to participate as well. It also eventually expanded outside of Green River to include homes from Rock Springs and Jamestown. As the tour continues, Murphy hopes it will keep evolving and expanding, as well as educating those who think nothing will grow in the desert.

"It's a very unique and fun event," Murphy said. "You can meet so many people in the community that don't believe that you can do this kind of stuff here in Wyoming."

This year's Pond and Garden Tour will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Aug. 6. Anyone interested in adding their garden to the tour can contact Murphy by calling 871-2003 or emailing lyneen@hotmail.com.

Those who want to visit the gardens in the tour in August are encouraged to bring their cameras and questions. Lists with the addresses of participating gardens will be available prior to the tour, and this year a Master Gardener will be available at one of the gardens to talk and answer questions. The tour is free to the public thanks to the help of local sponsors, but a raffle will also be held to raise funds for Golden Hour Senior Center. Those who want to learn more can visit the "Green River Pond and Garden Tour" Facebook page.