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Watershed Friendly Garden Tour

Thanks to all who made the June 2013 Watershed Friendly Garden Tour a success! The garden tour typically features rain gardens, porous pavers, native plant landscaping and wildlife habitat, rain barrels, soil amendments, composting and more. Local residents open their gardens and share their experiences landscaping with our water resources in mind.

Sites are typically clustered so that visitors can maximize time spent at each location, rotating through different sections of the county. If you own or know of a watershed-friendly garden you would like to nominate for our next tour, please let us know.

The tour is self-guided, with participants enjoying each garden at their your own pace, and visiting as many or as few as they wish. No RSVP is required. For questions about the next tour, please email us or call 703-324-1423, TTY 711.

Each of the site hosts distributes copies of Resources for Watershed Friendly Gardeners.

Year-Round Watershed Friendly Sites

The following three watershed friendly sites can be visited at any time during daylight hours.

Hidden Oaks Nature Center: 7701 Royce Street, Annandale, VA 22003. Long offering exemplary programming on local wildlife and plants, Hidden Oaks also provides a place to view permeable paving, rain barrels, and a rain garden. A pond and NWF certified Wildlife Habitat garden complete this woodland retreat.

Fairfax County Providence District Supervisor's Office: 8739 Lee Highway, Fairfax, VA 22031. This site is a sustainable low impact development demonstration location fascinating for all visitors. The parking lot at this government building has been retrofitted with a rain garden and attractive pervious pavers. A green roof captures rainwater on an adjacent shed. A well-placed mirror allows visitors to see onto the green roof year-round.

Herrity Green Roof Demonstration Project: 12055 Government Center Parkway, Fairfax, VA 22030. Three different planting levels illustrate the three types of green roofs within the 5,000 sq ft. demonstration project which includes extensive, semi-intensive, and intensive vegetated roof systems. Green roofs provide energy savings benefits, mainly by reducing rooftop temperatures, while several deep planters filled with native shrubs and perennials also retain and filter rainwater that would otherwise runoff untreated into the storm drains. The project showcases the beauty and variety of green roofs.