Encinitas Garden Festival & Tour Set for April 20

Editor's note: The following is a release from the Encinitas Garden Festival & Tour.

The eighth annual Encinitas Garden Festival & Tour will be held on Saturday, April 20, 2013 from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM, and feature more than 20 private gardens. This all-day event celebrates community, gardening, and the horticultural heritage of Encinitas with a Gardener’s Marketplace, self guided walking tour of the featured gardens, and talks by local gardening experts.

This year, the Festival returns to Olivenhain, where neighborhood residents will open their garden gates to welcome tour guests. The 2013 tour celebrates all types of gardens with a special focus on how homeowners use their spaces, both large and small. The garden neighborhood features a natural meadow, tranquil water features, meandering paths, and birds flitting amidst mature trees and citrus groves.  

In the Gardener’s Marketplace vendors offer unusual plants, vegetable seedlings, garden art, and more.  Exhibitors and guest speakers will provide information about gardening in the San Diego area addressing topics such as backyard chickens, bee keeping, container gardens, Southern California blueberries and many other topics. The Marketplace is open all day and serves as the starting point from which attendees set out on foot into the surrounding neighborhood for the self-guided walking tour.

As a non-profit organization, a portion of the event proceeds from this event go to the Encinitas Garden Festival Fund at the Coastal Community Foundation. Funds are reinvested throughout the City in the form of gardening books for local libraries, funding for public landscaping, school gardens, and other garden-related projects. Recent donations have also been made to the Mira Costa College Horticultural Student Scholarships Fund, San Diego Botanic Garden, and Community Resource Center.

To date, the Encinitas Garden Festival & Tour has drawn more than 8,400 attendees who have toured more than 162 gardens and greenhouses throughout Encinitas.

While the Marketplace is free and open to the public, garden admission is by reservation or ticket only. Admission reserved in advance is $23 for adults and $7 for children (10 and under). The event is expected to sell out, but if space is still available on festival day, adult admission will be $30, children will be $10.

After March 15, 2013, advance garden tour reservations will be available online at www.encinitasgardenfestival.org and at local nurseries.  

Free parking is offered off-site at Mira Costa Community College San Elijo Campus (3333 Manchester Avenue, Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Ca 92007).  Buses shuttle tour goers between the parking lot and the Gardeners’ Marketplace starting at 9:45am. The last bus leaves the Marketplace to return to the parking lot at 5:00pm.