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BISBEE — Those with green thumbs had plenty of reason to celebrate in Bisbee on Saturday, as the Bisbee Bloomers hosted their annual garden tour.
Now in its eighth year, the tour highlights 11 home gardens in the city, most of which are within walking distance of each other.
“We try to move it around the town so that people get an idea of different kinds of gardening styles,” said Kay Lynn Cummins, president of the Bisbee Bloomers. Last year the tour had stops in the town suburb of Warren, but this year the majority of the gardens were located in the Tombstone Canyon area, with two in Old Bisbee.
Plans for next year’s tour are already being made, and the hope is to show off a wider selection of the city.
  
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“We’re gonna be scattered,” Cummins said.
For $10, visitors could walk amongst the morning glories, desert tobacco plants, tomatoes, peppers and other various vegetation.
Home owners and volunteers stood readily by at each location to answer questions and dole out gardening tips.
Debby Gardner, a Bisbee resident of nine years, showed off her array of plant life to a crowd of visitors for the first time this year.
“This garden is about two years old,” she said. “My husband is not a gardener, I did it all myself.”
Two large agave plants frame the entrance to Gardners’ stone-paved garden path. A pomegranate and hibiscus tree supply a little bit of shade for the multitude of smaller flowering plants, the majority of which are indigenous to the area.
“Obviously, it’s going to do better here if it’s something that’s made for this climate,” she said. “So I would say about 80 percent of the plants are made for this environment.”
Purple Russian sage and other vibrantly colored flowers dot the yard, and a small fish pond sits to the side of the house. Amid the questions about watering and winter tactics, frequent flashes from cameras come from the agave plants, which Garner said are nicknamed “century plants” for their long life span.
“The myth is that they live for 100 years, they bloom and then they die,” she said. She attributes this to the relatively short life expectancy of those who originated the nickname a century ago. “My guess is they probably bloom when they’re about 40ish, but once they bloom, they die.”
As her name suggests, Gardner knows how to sustain her yard. One efficient and environmentally conscious way she has found to do that is to utilize both rain water and “gray water.”
“For instance, I use the water from my bath tub and my laundry,” she said. “Anything that isn’t a desert plant, that requires more water, I water with the gray water.”
Garner motions toward a PVC pipe coming from her house and into the garden.
“Instead of that pipe coming out of the bath tub and into the sewer, we ran a pipe all the way into the yard,” Gardner said.
A small stack of pipes rests along the wall of the house.
“I have five or six permutations of pipe, depending on where I want the water to go,” Gardner said. “You can get a lot more complex with valves and everything, but this is very simple.”
Along with the plant life, visitors can take a moment to admire freshly painted works of art, courtesy of the Bisbee Arts Commission’s 10th Annual Plein Air Painting Competition, which is being held in conjunction with the garden tour.
Numerous artists are located along the paths between gardens painting images that will later be entered into the contest.
Chris Rightmer of Tucson came down with his family to take part in the competition.
“This is actually the second time,” he said. “I did it a couple years ago.”
A painter for eight years, Rightmer’s work, along with the other works created that day, was entered into a competition with prizes ranging up to $500 for Best in Show.
Artists also could submit their work into a silent auction.
Money raised though the Bisbee Bloomers Garden Tour will filter back into the community though public projects, said Cummins, who noted some of the Bloomers’ previous projects.
“We’ve adopted a park in town,” she said. “We’ve donated park benches and cigarette butt receptacles.”
Receptacles of another kind also help to keep the town tidy. Over a dozen “mutt mitts” stations have been distributed, courtesy of the Bloomers.
“We have a lot of dog lovers in Bisbee.”
REPORTER Derek Jordan can be reached at 515-4680 or by e-mail at derek.jordan@svherald.com.
