As a family, we went to Gainesville’s garden tour this past weekend. It’s their fifth annual event, though only our first time attending. It was pretty interesting. I got to talk to a lot of gardeners that really knew their stuff. Their most helpful advice came from the 30-or-so years of experience most of them had. It turns out that you have to be retired in order to be a master gardener. I think I could one day become a master, however. Perhaps the youngest ever. I’m not truly a master gardener, but I knew most of what I was reading and being told. The information I lack is the breadth of identification that these people had. Maybe that’s it; once you can identify almost every plant in Georgia, you’re a master. Only 800,000 more to go and I think I’ll have it. Freakin’ Oak trees and Posion Ivy varieties comprise most of them. The picture above (some sort of Hydrangea variety) will take you to a Flickr gallery I’ve created from the event. The pictures were taken by me and Amy, though they weren’t necessarily supposed to be artistic. We were mainly interested in remembering the designs and plants for use in our own garden. Although most of these gardeners had lavish flower beds and ornate landscaping, there were a few that had simpler designs (i.e. ‘square’). That gives hope to those of us that can’t yet spare the time (nor money) to create our own Atlanta Botanical Gardens.