Mother’s Day Tradition | An Atlanta Botanical Garden Tour

The forecast on Sunday called for a hot mess.  I got an alert on my phone that read, “Severe thunderstorms, hail, and possible tornados expected.”  Yikes!!  Not the best weather to go on a garden tour.  So I put on my raincoat and rain boots and set out for that day’s adventure.  My mom and I have been going on the Atlanta Botanical Garden Tour for the past 10 years and we’ve never let a little rain (or a monsoon) stop us from seeing all of the houses on the tour.  The ABG tour offers a glimpse into the private gardens of some of Atlanta’s most beautiful homes.  The Mother’s Day tour covers both Saturday and Sunday and has between 8 and 13 homes to see.  We always find it fun to challenge ourselves to see all of the homes on the list in one day if we can, lol.  This is my favorite part because I have often driven by a home and wondered what it looked like on the inside or around the back.  Now don’t lie….you know you’re just as nosey as I am, lol.  These are million dollar homes y’all and the landscape architects are simply amazing at their craft.  From simple and clean landscaping to lush and dense woods these homes on the garden tour offer so much diversity and inspiration.

This year’s tour did not disappoint us.  Our first stop was a house that had a French feel to it.  The entrance of the home was gated and as you walked through the gates you were met with a gravel driveway beautifully lined with trees that guided you to the front of the house.   As you walked around towards the back of the house there were two separate garden areas, one was a sculpted garden and one was an herb garden.  Both led you towards the backyard which was my favorite part of the house.  You walked down several stone steps, that were surrounded by low hanging branches, to get to the in ground pool.  To the left of the pool area was a large privacy wall made of hedges.  There, stood a stunning glass greenhouse which housed the largest agave plant I had ever seen.  As we came back through the hedge wall we walked past the sculpted garden, which was directly across from the pool.  As we started to exit the garden we walked through a small but very impressive vineyard.  I thought this was so cool because it shows that you don’t have to have a lot of land to have your own vineyard.  As we walked down the gravel entrance to leave the house I remember thinking how much I loved that garden.  It reminded me of the trip to France that I took with my mother and it made me love spending the day with her even more.

You would think that this Mother’s Day tradition would get old, but this tour really is a lot of fun and it gives us the opportunity to spend quality time together and bond over our love for plants and gardens.  I don’t know about you but I am always looking to improve our home and I love getting ideas from other home and gardens.  My love for gardening comes from my mother and her love for gardening.  She used to show me how to take care of the earth in order to get the plants to grow.  She taught me the names of all of her favorite plants and later on in life when I worked at Home Depot I learned so much more about gardening.  Her passion for gardening really cultivated my love for it as well….you see what I did there??? Cultivated my love, lol.  It’s true though!  I really do enjoy watching my baby plants grow into bright and beautiful mature plants.  There is something really satisfying about not killing them, lol.

For those of you who love spending time with your mom walking around the garden of a complete stranger’s home without getting the police called on you for trespassing, check out this Mother’s Day activity for next year.  It might just be the start of a new tradition.