Coeur d'Alene Garden Club tour showcases six inspiring local gardens
Six Coeur d'Alene Garden Club stops open Sunday, including one yard that began as flat dirt and now helps fund school and community garden projects.
Six gardens in Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls and Hayden will open Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the Coeur d'Alene Garden Club’s self-guided tour, giving visitors a rare look at the private yards club members chose for beauty, creativity and community impact. The event is built for easy summer wandering, but its real payoff reaches well beyond the flowers and hardscape.
A Sunday route through three North Idaho cities
The tour spreads across Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls and Hayden, which means the experience is as much a neighborhood drive as it is a garden walk. Because it is self-guided, visitors can move at their own pace and spend more time in the yards that spark ideas for home landscapes, pollinator pockets, vegetable beds or quiet sitting areas.
That flexibility is part of the appeal. Instead of a staged showcase in one venue, the tour turns six private gardens into six different design lessons, each shaped by the homeowners’ own taste, space and years of work.
Connie Ashby's garden shows what patience can build
Connie Ashby’s yard is one of the tour’s most vivid examples of what happens when a bare lot becomes a living landscape. The property began as flat dirt, and she had to learn which plants and trees could survive in the area before the space became the layered, personal sanctuary it is now.
What stands out is not only the planting, but the personality. Whimsical art and a thoughtful layout give the garden a sense of play, while the structure of the space reflects the practical side of gardening in North Idaho, where success depends on trial, observation and a willingness to adjust. It is the kind of stop that offers more than inspiration: it gives visitors a working model for building beauty from scratch.
The club looks for gardens with style and a point of view
Jill Marfice, the club president, said the selection process centers on gardens that are visually striking and inspiring to fellow gardeners. That means the club is looking for more than neat beds and healthy blooms; it wants spaces that catch the eye and show off plant variety, design choices and a clear artistic personality.
Tour chair Judy Feldner added another filter: the gardens should give back to the community. That standard helps explain why the event feels larger than a simple open-house stroll. The chosen gardens are not just decorative settings, they are public-facing examples of what local gardeners can build, adapt and share with their neighbors.
The fundraiser supports more than pretty spaces
The Garden Tour sends its proceeds to nonprofits, churches and schools with horticultural needs, including community gardens, raised beds for seniors and equipment for school or nonprofit projects. That spending pattern ties the event directly to practical work across Kootenai County, from classroom greenhouse programs to food-growing efforts and accessible garden spaces.
The club has also said its grants help organizations expand horticultural education, create new garden areas and buy equipment or supplies for food-growing projects. In other words, the tour’s revenue does not sit in a general pot; it gets put to use in places where gardening becomes instruction, service and a path to participation for people of different ages and abilities.
The tour has grown into a steady summer tradition
The event’s roots go back decades. Coverage in 2022 described the Garden Tour as a summer tradition for the past 24 years, 2023 called it the 25th annual tour and 2025 identified it as the 27th annual Garden Tour. That long run matters because it shows the event has outlasted changing trends and kept a foothold in the region’s summer calendar.
Attendance and proceeds have followed that staying power. The 2022 tour drew nearly 900 guests to six gardens and raised more than $12,000. In 2023, the tour raised more than $20,000, and in 2024 it brought in $13,600, with 70-plus volunteers helping the effort run smoothly.
Where the money has gone, and why the tour still matters
The 2025 Garden Tour brought in over $30,000, more than double the 2024 total, and the grants reached a mix of school, nonprofit and community-garden projects. Recipients included Hayden Meadows Greenhouse Project, Lakes Middle School PTSA, Shared Harvest Community Garden and the North Idaho College Garden Club Scholarship Endowment, alongside other local efforts that use horticulture as a tool for learning and access.
Earlier grant cycles also supported Hayden Meadows Elementary School, Lake City High School, Fernan STEM Academy, Skyway Elementary School, Lutheran Church of the Master Community Garden, Turkeys & More and WingsRising Inc. Those names show how far the tour’s impact runs, from school greenhouse programs to nonprofit gardens and senior-friendly growing spaces. The result is a fundraiser that turns a Sunday outing into durable support for the people and places that keep gardening rooted in North Idaho life.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
