Clayton Patch Editor Reluctantly Goes on Garden Tour

On Saturday, I faced a decision.

It was 1:30 p.m. and I had a few options for how I could spend the rest of my day:

A. Game 3 of the Thunder-Grizzlies series was going to start in 30 minutes. I do enjoy playoff basketball, even if it's Thunder-Grizzlies.

B. My cousin was having a party in Oakland. I do like parties and my cousin.

C. I could have cleaned the bathroom. Don't enjoy it, but it really needed to be done.

D. I could go on the Clayton Garden Tour.

Going on the tour was the second least-fun option on the list. I don't have anything against gardening. I just don't do it. My understanding of gardening, pre-tour, was: You plant seeds, you give them water, you watch them grow and you get plants. Not my thing. I like sports, reading, watching movies, weekends with friends — you know, fun stuff.

That being said, I do like my job. Part of it, like all jobs, is doing things you woudn't normally do. So, I manned up and headed over to the Clayton Historical Society to start my tour.

2 p.m. — Some quick background on the Clayton Garden Tour. This was the 19th annual tour and it ran Friday and Saturday. There were six houses chosen for the tour. Three homes were rejected (ouch!). Four of the homes were in Clayton and two were just across the border in Concord. All of the money from the tour goes to the .

I arrived at the historical society and introduced myself, which I've done 2,481 times in the last five months:

"Hi, my name is Patrick Creaven. I'm the editor of Clayton Patch. We're an online news site for Clayton..."

Luckily, one of the nice ladies at the booth knew who I was so I didn't have to give the complete speech.

It took some convincing to let me go on the tour for free, but the society's curator, Mary Spryer, was kind enough to give me the garden tour booklet and send me on my way.

"You only have two hours, so you better hurry," one of the ladies said as I walked to my car.

"A challenge," I thought. "Game on!"

2:15 p.m. — I sped in my 1998 Mazda Protege to house No. 1 on Shell Lane.

I was all set to embrace hundreds of flowers, but as I came into the home of Linda Pinder, I saw something else.

Quilts. Lots and lots and lots of quilts. Linda does have a garden in the back yard, which has a tranquil feeling. The dappled shade allows for wonderful texture, foliage and flower color. (Note: I obviously copied the last sentence, word-for-word, from the handbook. To be honest, I had to look up the definition of "foliage".)

But the centerpiece of Pinder's home is the quilts. She's made 148 of them since she took up the hobby 13 years ago. They are impressive. Some are huge, some are small, some have complex designs, others are simple. And they're colorful.

"I press quilt, do you know what that means?" Pinder asked me.

She might as well have asked what's the best way to grow Tradescantia.

"No," I answered.

I know now that press quilting means Pinder picks the fabric and cuts and places it where she wants it and then gets a professional stitcher to stitch it. However it works, it works. I might not be a quilting expert, but Pinder's quilts are worth seeing.

Before I left, I asked her why she enjoys quilting so much.

"I love doing it," Pinder said. "I would leave for work at 6:30 in the morning and not come home till 7 at night and quilting for me just releases stress and is very relaxing."

2:38 p.m. — Admiring the quilts put me a bit behind schedule, so I hurried a little bit through the second stop on the tour.

House No. 2 is owned by Martin and Diane Andrews. The couple lived in Connecticut for 25 years, where Martin was based as a United Airlines pilot. But they wanted to move to a warmer climate. So, after Diane's parents died, the couple moved into their home on Nottingham Circle in 2009, and set about transforming the yard, front and back.

It's quickly becomes obvious what makes the Andrews' garden unique — there is no grass. Instead, lava rock peppers the front and back yard with the plants sprouting like little islands out of the rock.

"We wanted an area that is nice to look at and inviting and would draw you out into the garden," Martin said.

The Andrews succeeded. Their drought-resistant garden was the most unique on the tour.

2:54 p.m. — On my third tour stop, I was greeted by a familiar face, Julie Pierce.

Pierce, the only woman on Clayton's City Council, is its longest serving member. Patch is politically neutral, so I won't write nice things about Pierce, like that she serves on a number of regional boards, usually asks the best questions in meetings and is rarely absent from any community event. Rules are rules.

Anyway, Pierce was kind enough to be my tour guide for Kathy Gray's garden on Pardi Lane. She made sure I didn't miss anything. First she showed me the hummingbird nest by the front door (Hummingbirds return to the same nest every year. Who knew?). Then she brought me to the side yard to show off Gray's berries, then we were on to the vegetable garden and citrus trees in the back.

Gray's garden is 100 percent organic. No pesticides are used; she even has a salt-water pool so there is no chlorine. Next to the home there is a bio-filter swale, which soaks up the runoff water from the garden so it doesn't reach the storm drain.

"(Kathy) has grandchildren and doesn't want them playing around in chemicals," Pierce said. "Plus, it's just better for the Earth."

3:18 p.m. — Describing Jon and Lisa Van Brusselen's home on Pine Hollow Road takes just three letters — wow.

Actually, "wow" doesn't do it justice. I don't want to fall victim to hyperbole, but the Van Brusselen's home might be the coolest house I've ever stepped into.

I'm not a strong enough writer to describe it properly, but the home has a tropical theme. It's what you would picture a five-star condo in Hawaii looking like. The floors and walls are all wood, there's a fish tank, large windows showcase the back yard. It's just, wow.

Jon Van Brusselen had a simple explanation for why he transformed his home into a tropical oasis.

"I just love it," he said. "I love that style. We came from San Francisco, which has a totally different climate, and we wanted something for the warmer weather."

Oh yeah, the Van Brusselens also have a garden. Jon says there are 110 palm trees in the back yard and the bird of paradise plants keep the tropical theme going.

What interested me more than anything were the three "huts" in the back yard. One was for the barbecue, another was a seating area and another featured a flat-screen TV. And there's a pool! It was all, simply, wow.

(Tangent:  Clayton Patch hasn't yet had a launch party. But, if one were to be held (hint, hint) it might be a good idea to convince the Van Brusselens to offer their back yard for a couple hours. Just an idea.)

3:39 p.m. — Next up was Art and Dee Turrin's home on Korna Lane in Concord.

With it being late in the day, the Turrins were checking out some of the other gardens on the tour so I had Art Turrin's sister Nicki show me around.

The first thing I noticed before walking into the back yard garden is the gate. It's made of a bunch of old tools (screwdriver, hammer, rake). 

Once in the garden, I noticed the smell. A master gardener who was there quickly named all the flowers, none of which I've heard of, that produced the aroma. It did smell good.

Overall, the garden was lush; it probably had the most greenery of any on the tour.

A cool feature was the cobble stones, which Art picked up from a construction job in San Francisco. They made a path through the garden. He also used recycled wood for the overhang of the patio.

Plus, there was a gong. If you want to make your garden 7 percent cooler than it already is, get a gong. Trust me, I fancy myself an expert now.

4:02 p.m. — Nuts! I would have reached the final tour stop in less than two hours, but I had trouble finding Neal and Cathy Richmond's home on Vista Point Court in Concord.

They were closing down shop when I arrived (the self-guided tour officially ended at 4 p.m.), but Neal bent the rules slightly and let me check out his garden.

It was stunning. No other garden on the tour was half as big, heck, no other garden was one-fifth the size of this one.

To give you some idea of its massiveness, there are about 150 varieties of daylilies in the garden. Just daylilies. Along with more plants I'd never heard of: Weigelia, Deutzia, Spiraea, Cocylopsis, Pieres, Coprosmas, Alstromeria, Dianthus, Sedum. And that's just scratching the surface.

Neal Rochmond had a career in sales until 20 years ago, when he decided to start doing what he loved. Now, he has a landscaping business and manages properties.

What's his philosophy for his garden?

"I know what I like and what I don't," Richmond said. "I don't care if it needs a lot of water. If I want it, I'll get it."

He said it doesn't take as much work as it looks to maintain his garden, and that he does 90 percent of the labor in the winter.

The garden would be spectacular on its own, but then there's the view. One can look out and see Concord, Martinez, Benicia and Pittsburg.

Richmond took some convincing to allow his garden to be on the tour and if you missed it, don't expect a second chance. He enjoyed sharing it over the weekend, but said it was a one-time thing.

"It's here to serve my own pleasure," Richmond said. "It might sound arrogant, because it is."

The End, Finally: So, I guess at this point I'm supposed to write how the garden tour was a life-changing experience, and I'm going to start a little garden on my apartment deck and take classes to learn different techniques. But I'm not going to do any of those things.

No joke, all of the gardens I saw Saturday impressed me. The discipline and care and even love it takes to have these fantastic gardens is beyond admirable. Plus, like all Claytonians I've met, everyone was extremely welcoming and kind and no one made fun of my low gardening IQ.

But what I enjoyed most from the garden tour wasn't the plants. It was one of the things that made me want to be a journalist in the first place — people.

From hearing about Pinder's passion for quilting, to listening to how Van Brusselen transformed his home to a tropical paradise to watching Richmond talk about the garden he loves, it was the people who made the garden tour worth it.

Yeah, I made the right decision Saturday.