Above photos taken by NM staff and Darius Kolarz
2025 was the most successful garden tour to date! We sold out of tickets, and could have sold more from the high demand that occurred.
The gardens this year were from the areas of Fort Rouge, St. Vital, Fort Richmond, St Norbert and south St. Vital. We had a total of 13 gardens and one community garden. Next year I will pare it down to 12 gardens, partly because the demand is there and the competition remains at around a dozen gardens. The community garden is to establish a place where we can have our plant sale and last minute ticket sales the morning of the garden tour.
The actual garden tour event along with the pre-tours went incredibly well. At the end of the first pre-tour we saw 7 of the gardens one evening and 6 the following evening. I asked the gardeners and volunteers if they had obtained inspiration and ideas from having viewed each other’s gardens and everyone put their hand up! That makes planning a garden tour well worthwhile when gardeners leave with ideas from other gardeners’ gardens they may not have otherwise had. We had a potluck event a week after the garden tour where all my volunteers were present but only half of the gardeners. There were many who were tied up with other commitments that evening. Nonetheless, the dishes those who made it brought were incredible and they were able to connect again after having met at the pre-tours the first time.
Big thanks once again to Tami, our Nature Manitoba Program Coordinator for all her incredible work in the background and to our graphic artist / designer / photographer Darius, a gorgeous theme of cosmos flowers were on all our posters, tickets, signs and badges indicating ‘gardener’ or ‘volunteer’. I am always pumped with the change of theme each year keeping our entire event ‘fresh’!!! The planning of new themes is a great way to kick off a new years' garden tour once all the gardens have been selected.
We had a few surprise interviews with CBC (Esther Chen, a featured gardener speaks with host Marcy Markusa listen here) and CTV (view the video here) this year which produced a lot of interest and enthusiasm. During one of the interviews, a comment I made was used on air where I indicated that garden tours are valuable for many reasons, one of them is to see plants we would never see available in garden centres. There is a vast assortment of plants we will find only in home gardens. It seems that the interviews were also viewed by our very own Mayor Scott Gillingham whose office requested names and addresses of all our participating gardeners in order to send letters of congratulations for participating in our Nature Manitoba Gardens of Distinction garden tour 2025! That was an unexpected perk for our gardeners and hope that it will become a yearly experience!
I am hot on the trail of new gardens for 2026 and am focussing on the Northeast quadrant of Winnipeg for next year - North and East Kildonan, Rivereast, Valley Gardens, Transcona, Elmwood and surrounding areas. If your garden or someone you know has an incredible garden in these areas, feel free to contact me A.S.A.P. at 204-295-4442 cell/text or email at timevansmassage@gmail.com. The goal is to have all the gardens signed up for the 2026 garden tour by the end of July 2025.
Written by Tim Evans, Garden Tour Coordinator, Manitoba Master Gardener, and Chair for The Prairie Garden book.