Secret Gardens of the East Bay this weekend!

It's about to happen! Tell the sun to shine, rain to stay away. Megan's made her garden completely into a show garden. All the planning, purchasing, planting has come to fruition. As we headed down the homestretch to the EAST BAY SECRET GARDEN TOUR, I sent Megan some questions about the process of preparing the garden. Here she is with a long list of answers. 


I am giving a talk on color at the Park Day School on Sunday April 25 at 1pm.  Mrs. Dalloway's will be selling FEARLESS COLOR GARDENS at the school.  Come and get your personally signed copy.


Hope to see you Saturday (April 24) or Sunday (April 25) this week for the tour. 


Happy Gardening, Keeyla

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Q & A with Megan 

What are you looking forward to with the Secret Gardens Tour?

Being able to share how beautiful the garden looks right now.  Hopefully people will be inspired to transform their own urban plots into a garden paradise.

What do you look for when you see other people's gardens?

Being inspired by new planting combinations.

What plants are the most satisfying to you right now in your garden?

I LOVE the heucheras. They provide all the color of flowers but in foliage form. There are new colors each year with yummy names like Crème Brulee and Peach Melba. We went crazy adding new heucheras for the tour.

Which area or color combination in your garden is the most interesting/exciting/stimulating?

The garden to the left of the fig bench is a particular favorite garden area. The shades of orange and yellow are bright and cheery all year long.

Which color combination makes you feel peaceful and serene?

I love the shade garden along the side of the house. Chartreuse, salmon, white, yellows. I love gazing out the kitchen window as I wash dishes and see the hummingbirds flittering in the abutilon.

Why do you want to grow plants that you can eat?

Cooking is a passion. Nothing is better than being able to walk out to the garden and gather ingredients for a meal.

What is most frustrating to you about your garden?

Too little space for vegetables. I’m considering replacing the blue bed with all vegetables.

In what ways have you seen the garden come into Lucy's life?

Lucy has been in the garden with me since she was a baby. At 6 months she would sit by my side as I gardened, picking up the lava that is in the soil mix. As she got older she created fairy houses made of flower petals that she laid out carefully on the “fairy rock.” Her friends call it a Cinderella garden. As a child I imagined having a flower garden and I love being able to provide such a beautiful place for her to play and imagine.

In what ways has having a garden transformed your life?

Gardening and cooking are my two passions. They are my creative outlets and as someone who spends her work life on a computer, they provide a much needed connection with what I find important in life. Spending a day gardening or cooking a meal for family and friends is my idea of the perfect day. At the end of it you have something of beauty to appreciate and share. When I’m stressed out, all I need to do is gaze outside at the garden and I’m instantly calmed.

In what ways has the garden influenced your relationship to color?

When we put our first garden in over 13 years ago, I gravitated towards paler colors: light pink, lilac, pale yellow. Think romantic impressionist colors. Orange, red, chartreuse were not colors I would have asked for. When we did the back yard a few years later, we added a lot of orange. I fell in love with orange then and it was and still is a prominent color of the backyard. It’s a feature color in our new kitchen. It was seeing what Keeyla did with her new garden that truly opened me up to hotter color combinations. The redone front yard is maroon, butterscotch, and mustard. It’s much splashier.

In preparing the garden for the upcoming tour:

What new plants are the most interesting to you?

The heucheras as I mentioned earlier are by far my most favorite additions.  They are just spectacular.  

New color combinations?

The hotter colors in the front yard and the maroon that was added to the dogwood garden. 

Your garden has many containers.  How do the containers work to improve, or express the garden?  How do the containers work with the house and the space?

Containers, more than anything, are perhaps what has inspired me more than anything about working with Keeyla.  They provide height and art to the garden and it's astonishing how many plants you can fit into one container.  Planting up a beautiful container is something I learned from studying how Keeyla plants containers.  This year for the tour I finally splurged and bought one of Keeyla's custom art ceramic containers.  I love it and would like to add more to the garden as budget permits.