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West Side garden lovers rejoice as two garden tours in Wauwatosa are slated for July.
The Wauwatosa Woman's Club hosts “Wauwatosa in Bloom” garden tour on that city’s east side on Saturday, July 12 from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m., and The Garden Club of Greater Milwaukee (GCGM) and The Garden Conservancy present Open Days at five unique private gardens located in the Washington Highlands, Saturday-Sunday, July 19-20, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.
Tickets for Wauwatosa Wauwatosa in Bloom – a fundraiser for the Woman’s Club – offer peeks at seven gardens for $15 and are available at https://www.wauwatosawomansclub.org/garden-tour or in person at Swan Pharmacy or Flower Lady.
On the day of the tour – which takes place rain or shine – tickets will be available at the WWC Clubhouse, 1626 Wauwatosa Ave. For more information, contact Laura Skoff at (414) 614-6489.
Here are the featured gardens, with description provided by the Woman’s Club:
- Wauwatosa Woman’s Club on Wauwatosa Avenue. Start your tour at the WWC Clubhouse, 1626 Wauwatosa Ave., where you can pick up your ticket and enjoy the new pollinator gardens and flower-lined patio. There will be a pop-up garden art market and refreshments for sale, including root beer floats.
- The Jones/Welk Home on 74th Street. Meander through this immaculate, sprawling landscape featuring an array of colorful pollinator beds. The eye-catching hanging glass designs offer an afternoon sun feature, sure to bring a smile!
- The Prosseo Home on Revere Avenue. A dramatic turret entry surrounded by cascading greenery welcomes you to this English Tudor home in the Washington Highlands. The elaborate backyard features fountains, colorful hydrangea of pink and blue, and a great variety of natives blended with annuals.
- The Von Rohr Home on Jackson Park Boulevard. Bright splashes of annuals combined with perennials present a stunning display of color in this backyard landscape. The incredible fern garden and patio filled with hanging baskets and containers of your favorite flowers are sure to please.
- The Allain/Schertz Home on Jackson Park Boulevard. An attractive front walkway presents a “crayon box of color” with eye-pleasing plantings of many varieties. The backyard has a New Orleans flair with multiple fountains, roses, and splashes of color.
- The Krause Home on Church Street. This is a paradise for shade lovers! As you enter this oasis of greenery, creative custom water features and a backdrop of hosta and ferns will showcase the creativity of these homeowners. Multiple varieties of Japanese Maple and ground cover are interspersed with containers and hanging plantings.
- The Kneeland-Walker House. The 1.5-acre grounds and Victorian-era garden at the Wauwatosa Historical Society’s Kneeland-Walker House are open for you to tour.
Meanwhile, tickets to the Open Day and the related Digging Deeper 90-minute, guided “Washington Highlands: Where Beer Barons, Prohibition and Garden City Landscape Architecture Intersect” walking tour are, well, slightly more complicated. Here’s the explanation:
Visitors may see all five Open Days gardens by purchasing three tickets – one for Serendipity Terraces and Ann’s Garden, one for Casa Alta Vista and Austermann Garden, and one for Rooms with a View for a total of $15 for Garden Conservancy members and $30 for the general public. Advanced purchase is required; tickets are timed for 10-noon, noon-2 and 2-4. Children 12 and under are admitted free with paid adult admission.
Advance purchase is also required for the Digging Deeper walking tour, with timed tickets for 10 a.m. or 2 p.m. and are $30 for Garden Conservancy members or $40 per person for the general public. Digging Deeper tickets are more limited than Open Days tickets. Tickets are available here.
And here are descriptions of the gardens featured, as provided by organizers:
- Austermann Garden. Perched at the highest point in the Washington Highlands, the Austermann Garden has evolved as the now 100-year-old tree canopy of the north yard has cast much of the property in deep shade. That hasn’t stopped the owners from creating a dramatic pathway edged with Annabelle hydrangeas that draws the visitor into the shady environs of towering Chinese elms underplanted with beds of shade-loving perennials interspersed with sculptures and fun art pieces. Taking advantage of sunny spots in the south and front yards, the owners have a collection of over 30 varieties of day lilies and colorful porch pots filled with topicals and bold annuals, as well as climbing vines.
- Casa Alta Vista. This Mediterranean style home, on the National Register of Historic Places, contains a pastiche of dramatic accents including outdoor staircases, archways, niches, inlaid terra cotta panels, brick patterning and a tile roof. Its counterpoint is a peaceful yard that is mostly in deep shade from the 100-year-old tree canopy. The owners have invested in stone walls and pathways, improved an existing water feature, and introduced color, shape and texture through pots filled with begonias and other tender shade plants to bring interest and energy to this oasis that seems a world apart from Wisconsin.
- Ann’s Garden. If "variety is the spice of life," one would call this a spicy garden. At last count, it includes over 30 varieties of trees and shrubs, and over 100 different ground covers, perennials, and native plants. The garden is now a certified wildlife habitat. Since retiring, Ann has discovered a new passion – ART! Now a docent at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Ann has combined both collecting and creating art with her love of gardening. She especially enjoys using natural materials and displays her art throughout the garden.
- Serendipity Terrace. The owners of this property had limited gardening space until 1984, when they had the opportunity to purchase the house, with a much larger lot above them. After reselling the house (with a reduced yard), they were left with a large, relatively flat upper garden which could be connected with the existing yard through a series of stone terraces, paths and stairs. All of a sudden they had lots of interesting spaces on which to garden. See how this stroke of luck has led them to a series of 3-season gardens which are indeed serendipitous! They continue to evolve as the owners discover irresistible plants that give them new ideas to further enrich a visitor’s experience – more serendipity!
- Rooms With a View. Built in 1926, this Germanic, cottage-style residence was the model home of the Washington Highlands in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin – both the house and neighborhood are on the National Historic Register. For the past 27 years the home has served as a beautiful backdrop to an evolving garden oasis, which has been transformed from a steep hill into a terraced garden filled with diverse plant life and themed areas. Among the highlights are gardens centered on a state-champion, 100-year-old ginkgo, a state-champion copper beech, a potager-style vegetable garden and a colorful front-yard border.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press. A fifth collects Urban Spelunking articles about breweries and maltsters.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has been heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
