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Art in the Garden Tour set for area

Photo from Garden Fairies

The Garden Fairies designed this colorful garden displayed on their Tampa Bay Garden Tour later this month.

By Mark Schantz | The Suncoast News

Published: May 16, 2009

TARPON SPRINGS - Every five years the Garden Fairies, an area group dedicated to landscape beautification, holds its Art in the Garden Tour of Homes.

This self-guided tour will take place from 9:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m next Saturday, May 23. A post-tour reception party will follow at 5 p.m. at the Painted Fish Gallery, in downtown Dunedin.

Garden Fairies Community Enhancement Transformation Project will use proceeds from the 2009 tour to help design a pocket park and community courtyard in downtown Tarpon Springs. The park-courtyard on Tarpon Avenue between Antiques Forever and Faklis Department Store will include a mosaic mural.

The tour of 10 houses along the Suncoast will include a colorful garden at a residence in Cobb's Landing, on Lake Tarpon in the Palm Harbor area.

Turf there was transformed into garden beds with drought-tolerant plants. The garden includes a barrier designed to reduce the amount of potentially harmful substances such as fertilizers and pesticides being washed into the lake, said Siobhan Nehin, chief Garden Fairy and a garden and landscaping designer.

Other stops on the tour will include Dunedin, Clearwater, Largo and the Trinity area of southwestern Pasco County.

The Garden Fairies will provide the exact locations of each garden on the tour only to people who purchase a ticket. Tickets will cost $25 a person until May 20 and then $35 from May 21 until the day of the event.

"The gardens on this current tour are amazing," Nehin said. "They are the gardens one drools over in national magazines."

Garden Fairies live all along the Suncoast so the tour features gardens throughout the area.

"People might want to concentrate on seeing gardens close to where they live or venture out on a grand tour of all the gardens," Nehin said. The best way to experience the tour is to carpool with friends, she said.

"We make formerly sad spaces beautiful," she added.

The 2004 tour organized by the 11-year-old Garden Fairies raised $8,000 for beautification of Fred Howard Park, in Tarpon Springs.

Art in the Garden Tour of Homes tickets are available at:

•Clay & Paper Gallery and the Painted Fish, 350 Main St. Dunedin.

•Gallery Blue, 210 S. Pinellas Ave., Tarpon Springs

•Tarpon Springs Chamber of Commerce, 11 E. Orange St., Tarpon Springs.

•Landmark Nursery, 853 East Lake Road, Palm Harbor.

•BB&T Bank, Lake St. George Branch, 3400 Tampa Road, Palm Harbor.

For more information visit www.wedigdoinit.com.

Mark Schantz can be reached at 727-815-1075 or mschantz@suncoastnews.com.

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