Cape Farm and Garden Tour 2021

The Cape Farm and Garden Tour 2021

To Benefit Food Banks and Pantries

The Cape Farm and Garden Tour 2021 on Saturday, June 5, 2021 from 9 AM to Noon and from 1 PM to 4 PM, will raise money to benefit local food insecurity at food banks and pantries that serve this region. 

The Tour includes three beautiful venues – Lavender Fields at Warrington Manor, LLC, a working herb farm with gardens, Mill Pond Garden, Inc., a small gem of a public botanic garden on Red Mill Pond, and the famous Shimizu Garden in old town Lewes with charming, sophisticated garden rooms around a three-hundred-year-old house, rarely available to public access.

The tour comports with State covid safety guidelines, masks and social distancing, with timed tickets available on host website at millpondgarden.com with this link to ticketing page choices:

https://millpondgarden.com/cape-farm-and-garden-tour-saturday-june-5th-2021/.

Staff at each site will check visitors in as they arrive at their scheduled time and be available to answer questions.  At each site visitors may enjoy self-guided tours. Masks and social distancing apply. Restrooms are not available at the venues. The ticket scheduled timing allows enough time to thoroughly enjoy each site, including shopping, as well as time to drive to the next site, approximately ten to twenty minutes away, and arrive at the visitor’s appointed time or shortly after if traffic is slow. Keeping to the schedule as much as possible is important due to covid crowd size safety limitations and parking limitations at two of the sites. All three sites are at least partially accessible to wheelchairs with a pusher.

Lavender Fields at Warrington Manor LLC, at 18864 Cool Spring Road, Milton, Delaware 19968, is a five-acre lavender farm between Harbeson and Milton, with a beautiful historic manor house dating to the Eighteenth Century, surrounded by delightful small gardens, a meadow, and an impressive 11-circuit labyrinth. The labyrinth, one of the best in the country, is encircled by large evergreens making for a gorgeous contemplation experience. 

Other delights include a small garden with delicate heirloom vegetables and flowers between twin silos and an intimate Zen garden with a small gurgling pond.  The Cottage Shop features lavender themed gifts and well-loved specialty soaps and candles designed and handcrafted at the farm. The Garden Shed offers spring and summer vegetables and flowers for sale, grown on the farm.

The farm grows serious fields of lavender constantly perfuming the air with the delicate scent of lavender. The woods have a wonderful handmade tree swing. There is an apiary at one end of the garden which visitors should not approach closely.

The proprietor of lovely Lavender Fields at Warrington Manor, LLC, Marie Mayor, retired from an education career at various county, state and federal agencies to bring her Acadian French heritage and love of farming, herbs, and the good life to Delaware where her success is widely known and appreciated. Marie also served as Chair of the Southern Delaware Tourism Board among many other leadership roles in the community.

The Shimizu Garden in old town Lewes at 431 Kings Highway, Lewes, Delaware 19958 is a treasure of sophisticated design and exquisite collection of mostly perennial and woody plants.  The ancient handsome three-hundred-year-old house is surrounded by garden rooms with fabulous fountains, sitting areas and several charming old out buildings.  Children of all ages will enjoy the tiny fairy garden. Gardeners will admire the diversity and beauty of cultivars and the master artistic style pruning of shrubs and trees to bring out their best and give them expressive character, a schooling in taste by itself worth the visit. Even the pavings are amazing in materials and design and planted in places with a diverse collection of perfect plants for between pavers. The custom wood fencing is a work of art, itself, perhaps the best in Lewes famous for three hundred years of artful wood fences. This garden provides intense interest all seasons of the year. 

This five-year-old garden is the creation of owners Osamu and Holly Shimizu, both retired professional horticulturists. Holly is emerita Managing Director of Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden and Executive Director of the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, DC, among many other leading roles in American and world horticulture. Osamu studied in Japan and Europe and has designed and installed private and public gardens in the mid-Atlantic, a highly esteemed Master of gardening arts and design.

Mill Pond Garden, the Farm and Garden Tour hosting venue, on Red Mill Pond at 31401 Melloy Court, Lewes, DE 19958, is a small, holistic, non-profit, public botanical garden, website at millpondgarden.com. The garden is a National Wildlife Foundation Certified Wildlife Habitat, a member of the American Public Garden Association, and a USDA Sentinel Garden. The three quarters of an acre of beautiful garden rooms is situated on Delaware’s largest 158-acre fresh water Red Mill Pond, with abundant wildlife including nesting resident Bald Eagles, Osprey, Great Blue and Green Herons, Cormorants, many species of ducks and geese, an Otter, a Beaver, and numerous other abundant birds, turtles, water birds and wildlife.

This is a walking garden designed for beauty, enjoyment, and education by displaying plants most beautiful and wildlife beneficial, sustainable, that do best here in the Cape region. The garden features fountains, a stream, waterfalls, a Koi pond, a Frog Pond Garden, woodland garden, fire pit, many arbors with ornamental vines, collections of ephemerals, Spirea, Camellia, Hellebores, Rhododendrons, a complete collection of Azalea poukenense, Roses, Hollies, Lilies, Phlox, evergreen groundcovers, 3 hibernaculums, several pollinator gardens, and homes for many native birds, reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals. Visitors might even see a resident 2.5 ounce Flying Squirrel peeping out of its box hole. The often highly fragrant garden, about 60% evergreen and 40% deciduous, has a lovely frontage onto beautiful Red Mill Pond with great vistas. Every season is floriferous for year-round garden appeal, including abundant flowering in winter, spectacular spring bulb displays, lush and lively annual and perennial summer displays. It is a garden for the senses and the spirit. Roses will be abundant for this Tour.

Mill Pond Garden, a federal IRS certified non-profit entity, was created by Michael Zajic, also founder of the Delaware Botanic Garden, after a career as Horticultural Supervisor of two botanic gardens, Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, and McCrillis Gardens in Bethesda, Maryland for the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning  Commission. Zajic has a long history in public horticulture including design of some of the prime gardens in the Washington, DC area, design of two world class light shows, a series on HGTV and Victory Garden, CBS Morning News garden presenter, and more than a score of books, magazines, and newspapers of coverage of his own private gardens, as well as authorship of garden educational tracts and gardening articles for newspapers.

The 2021 Cape Farm and Garden Tour allows access not only to three of the most beautiful sites in the Cape region at their peak, but also access to these talented and knowledgeable individuals who created them and who will be on duty, a rich opportunity.  Visitors may have a great time while proceeds help feed the hungry.