Some garden tours are strictly fantasy trips; others are more instructive. "People need to bring a pad and a pencil and a camera to this tour, because there are so many good ideas," says Madaline Sparks, contributing gardening editor at Real Simple magazine. "There's a lot of take-away for the plant lover, the hardscape lover, those interested in how to marry the garden to the architecture. Yet a beginner could take a portion of one of these gardens and say, 'This is how I'm going to start.'" She is referring to this Saturday's Spencertown Academy Hidden Gardens Tour, which Sparks, who also has a garden design, installation and maintenance business in Spencertown, helps organize. "There's plenty of fantasy in these seven stops," she say, "but there's also a huge education in garden problem-solving." The seven properties on the tour, ranging from a “Pond Cottage” garden behind a charming 1770 house to a large-scale horticultural masterpiece featuring stunning white gardens, a kitchen garden, and wooded walking trails, are tucked away on the back roads of Old Chatham, Nassau, and Canaan, New York.. Another of the properties on the tour, Spruce Ridge Farm, a 48-acre alpaca farm in Old Chatham whose extensive gardens include a wildflower meadow, also will be the setting the night before the tour for a garden party, all part of a program to benefit the Academy. Hidden Gardens TourSaturday, June 26 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Tickets/$25, may be purchased in advance on-line or on the day of the tour at the Old Chatham Country StoreAdvance ticket buyers may arrange for a boxed lunch ($15), that will be served in a pond-side setting not included in the standard tour. Twilight in the GardenTickets/$50, advance sales only Friday, June 25, 6 p.m.
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