Arts & Entertainment Community

Have a colorful weekend at the Gig Harbor Garden Tour

Posted on June 25th, 2026 By: Charlee Glock-Jackson

Six local gardens will welcome visitors for the Gig Harbor Garden Tour this weekend. The gardens are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, June 27, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, June 28.

This year’s gardens belong to Cindy Bartel; Leslie and Tom Watkins; Jill and Chris Denis; Beverly Ash Gilbert and Jerry Gilbert; Rebekah and Zach Blue; and Dan Shoap and Jeff Stelmach.

They range in size from large waterfront estates tended by generations of family gardeners, to forested retreats filled with a rainbow of colors, to tiny city spaces. Each garden reflects the owners’ spirit, vision and creativity — and the love and dedication that goes into creating and maintaining such beautiful spaces.

Long-time gardeners, novices and those who simply appreciate beauty will find inspiration.

Each garden also features local artists at work, as well as vendors selling garden-related items.

Beauty in a small space

Cindy Bartel’s garden is proof that one doesn’t need a big space to create something beautiful.

Cindy Bartel’s garden features an explosion of colors. Photo by Charlee Glock Jackson

Located on a cul-de-sac near downtown Gig Harbor, her small backyard garden is filled-to-the-brim with roses, daylilies, hydrangeas (including a favorite “Strawberry Vanilla”), many fragrant lavender plants and more.

Bartel converted an old dog run beside the house into a lovely planted area filled with impatiens, poppies and hanging baskets of petunias. The walkway along the other side of the house sports a tall wooden ladder with plants in terra cotta pots on each rung, and an ancient and well-loved red wagon, also filled with pots of various sizes.

A wagonload of pots at Cindy Bartel’s garden. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

Bartel said she got “lots and lots” of terra cotta pots at a recent plant swap. Every container is thoughtfully placed among in-ground plants, along the walkways and near the front door. Strewn throughout the garden are little hand-painted stones, created over the years by her children and more recently by her two young granddaughters.

Painted rocks decorate Cindy Bartel’s garden. Photo courtesy of Bartel

One of Bartel’s favorite items is a small bubbling fountain set up on the shady patio. The water sound is especially soothing on a hot day.

Turning ‘awful’ into beautiful

Leslie and Tom Watkins moved from Fox Island to their home on Wollochet Bay about five years ago. The house was painted “an awful pink,” with a yard that was even more awful.

A red astibile at Leslie and Tom Watkins’ garden. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

The couple transformed the space into a lovely, peaceful oasis where Japanese maples thrive, astilbe and hostas embellish the shade, and gazing balls peek from every nook and cranny. The gazing balls pay homage to Leslie’s Canadian grandmother, who had “a huge gazing globe” in her garden.

A bright yellow bench in a flower bed at the Watkins garden. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

The Watkins replaced several unwanted structures with new plantings and a large, meandering dry creek bed along one side of the gated property. Leslie says she does things “by trial and error,” and is often more attracted to foliage and structure of plants than to bright flowers – although there’s plenty of color throughout the garden.

Other highlights include numerous art pieces, many of which have been powder-coated in bright colors, and a cute little playhouse — painted a lovely lavender — a special place for the grandkids and great-grandkids.

Stones fill the dry creek at Leslie and Tom Watkins’ garden. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

A waterfront retreat

Jill Denis calls herself an “intuitive gardener.”

Her garden is filled with plants that bloom at different times, so there’s something new and lovely happening in every season. It starts with camelias and hellebores in late winter; continues with peonies and lilacs in spring; and grows to include echinacea, Shasta daisies, hydrangeas, geraniums and many others from summer into autumn.

Jill Dennis’s garden includes about 50 hydrangeas. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

Guests enter the garden through an arbor-like gate festooned with a tree hydrangea and flanked by dappled willows. Dozens of hostas and ferns line the shaded walkway near the entrance.

Denis has many favorites, among them a purple-blue scabiosa fama; a pale pink mallow with a wine-colored center and the dozens of violas that line the borders of each bed. Oh, and echinacea! She estimates that she has “more than a hundred” scattered throughout the garden.

Pink mallows line the outside of Jill Dennis’s garden. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

At last count, she also had 20 peonies and has also added 20 or 30 hydrangeas over the last couple of years (all told, there are probably 50 right now). Several varieties of geraniums thrive in semi-shady spots, including bright fuchsia Cranes Bill and Johnsons Blue.

A number of large, well-established rhododendrons were already in place when she and her husband Chris bought the property that sits on the shore of Gig Harbor Bay (near the public boat launch) five years ago. Artist Pat Askren will be painting whimsical drawings, and Cathy McElroy will be creating garden-themed mosaics in this garden.

Hostas and a birdbath in Jill Dennis’s garden. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

A childhood home, a family legacy

Beverly Ash Gilbert and Jerry Gilbert’s garden pays tribute to the concept of aging-in-place. It’s a 20-acre site with breathtaking views of Puget Sound and Mount Rainier, the place where Beverly, an artist and author of several books, grew up.

The Druid garden at the forested Gilbert property. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

ADA-friendly pathways lead to unique “rooms” – the Bohemian Garden filled with vibrant colors, the shady Druid Garden with circle of sitting-stones, the Romantic Garden of pastel hues, and the silvery-white Serenity Garden.

On sunny days, Beverly likes to swim with the koi in a picturesque pond adjacent to her art studio. Nearly three dozen hydrangeas are planted throughout the property, many of them in large colorful pots, and there are also 17 or 18 Japanese maples.

The koi pond at the Gilbert garden. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

A huge Douglas fir, estimated to be around 500 years old, occupies a special spot. Jerry recently measured its circumference at 18 feet.

An apple orchard, filled with many trees that Beverly’s father grafted, has been expanded to include pear, fig, peach, Asian pear and several varieties of plum. Jerry added a berry garden with Marionberries and several varieties of raspberries. He has also constructed numerous arbors, trellises and metal artworks throughout the property.

The land is designated a Backyard Wildlife Sanctuary, and will ultimately be conserved as the Ash Family Forest.

The fir tree at the Gilbert garden is an estimated 500 years old. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

A sanctuary of peace and healing

The forest sanctuary of Zach and Rebekah Blue is a secluded refuge, set back from busy Peacock Hill Avenue. It’s a comparatively small property, just over an acre, but the winding wood chip-covered paths that meander through the site make it seem much larger.

Among other wonders, the garden features 100 Japanese maples – including a spectacular “Eskimo Sunset” — many species of rhododendron and a special weeping katsura tree planted in memory of Zach’s mother.

A weeping katsura tree honors the memory of Zach Blue’s mother. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

They call the property “The Garden of Peace, a place to connect, heal and release,” where they often host music performances. The koi pond near the garden entrance is home to a school of multicolored fish (named after rock musicians). In keeping with their commitment to protecting their natural environment, when they had to remove several ancient madrona trees, Zach and Rebekah turned the downed trees into benches where visitors can rest, serenaded by wild birds and the pond’s gentle water sounds.

The koi pond and waterfall at Rebekah and Zach Blue’s garden. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

Zach notes that in the fall, the Japanese maples are “absolutely spectacular.” On Sunday, June 28, a quartet of musicians from the Peninsula Youth Orchestra will play in a shady nook on the forested property.

Autumn maples in the garden of Zach and Rebekah Blue. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

A living canvas filled with color

Garden 6 is the living canvas of Olalla residents Dan Shoap and Jeff Stelmach. It was featured in the tour seven years ago, and since then much has changed yet much has remained the same – although the “old” plants have grown and thrived and are all the lovelier.

The Olalla garden of Dan Shoap and Jeff Stelmach. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

Forest borders the five-acre site, but the garden itself comprises a full palette of color — bright oranges and deep purples, many shades of pink, lavender, yellow and even white. Shoap layers the colors and textures as if the garden was a painting.

Highlights include a lovely flowering dogwood, several varieties of delphinium, thoughtfully placed Japanese maples, shady arbors draped with clematis and roses, patches of sea lavender nestled alongside lilies and many-hued alstroemeria.

Bright red alstromeria in the garden of Dan Shoap and Jeff Stelmach. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

Shoap’s favorites include an orange-red “Outrageous” daylily, an 8-foot tall yellow verbascum, delphinium of all kinds, a dainty pink dactylorhiza orchid with purple stripes and an “Angel’s Fishing Rod” diorama pulcherrium, a perennial of the iris family native to South Africa.

These “outrageous” orange-red daylillies are among Dan Shoap’s favorites. Photo by Charlee Glock-Jackson

Raising funds for literacy

The garden tour has raised funds to support literacy in the Gig Harbor community for 27 years. Last year, it brought in more than $35,000, which was shared among 17 community organizations and schools.

Tickets to the tour cost $25 per individual or $20 per person for groups of 10 or more. They are available at Gig Harbor Ace Hardware, The Garden Room, Tickled pink, Wilco Farm Store, Rosedale Nursery, Wild Birds Unlimited, Walrath Landscaping Supplies and at Sunnycrest Nursery in Lakebay on the Key Peninsula. Tickets can also be purchased online here.