NVSWCD's Sustainable Garden Tour highlights features like rain gardens, native plant landscaping, rain barrels, backyard wildlife habitat, composting and more. Local residents open their gardens and share their experiences landscaping with natural resources in mind. Hidden treasures and verdant landscapes await you! View a complete list of our gardening resources in Resources for Sustainable Gardeners.

We do not currently have any Sustainable Garden Tours scheduled. In the meantime, please explore garden tours from past years! See the links to each site's garden tour below. 

For more information or to nominate a future site, please email us.

2021 Virtual Sustainable Garden Tour

• June 1 -  Slice of Heaven
• June 4 - From Backyard Lake to Native Paradise
• June 6 - Gardening for Wildlife (pt.1 & pt. 2)
• June 8 - In the Garden
• June 10 - Monarch Nirvana (pt. 1 & pt. 2)
• June 13 - Horse Watch Hill
• June 16 - Through the Garden
• June 20 - Front Yarden
• June 22 - The Gardens of a Poet-Scientist
• June 24 - Navy ES Turns a Green Leaf
• June 27 - Flint Hill ES Gardens and Grounds
• June 30 - Backyard Garden with Creek
• July - Creating Sustainable Landscapes One Yard at a Time

2020 Virtual Sustainable Garden Tour

The 2020 Sustainable Garden Tour was held virtually and highlighted front-yard gardens and edible landscapes in partnership with the Fairfax Food Council Urban Agriculture Working Group. Virtual experiences from each of this year's incredible garden tour sites were added throughout the month of June. These homeowners opened their gardens and shared their experiences with videos, presentations, and webinars. Resources and virtual tours from the 2020 Virtual Sustainable Garden Tour are included below. Many homeowners had a Virginia Conservation Assistance project - you can learn more about the VCAP program here.  

• June 2 - Backyard Transformation: 600 Plants in 1/6 Acre
• June 4 - Conservation Landscaping and Infiltration Trench in Burke
• June 6 - Charming Front Yard Garden in Alexandria
• June 8 - Lessons Learned in Our Native Plant Garden - Fisher/Rosenthal Residence in Clifton
  • Plant NOVA Natives has a wide array of resources to obtain and care for native plants
• June 10 - All Aboard for a Garden Journey
• June 12 - VCAP and Veggies in Clifton: A Tour of Camp Canestra
• June 14 - Our Gardens, Our Refuge - A Labor of Love
• June 17 - Front Yard Edible Landscaping at Suters Glen Permaculture Farm
  • This homeowner has also compiled a collection of even more information about his farm and their agricultural practices, which you can view here
• June 20 - Karen's Native Plant and Vegetable Garden
  • This homeowner has also created a video tour of the Invasive Management Area (IMA) site adjacent to her home, which you can view here, as well as a video slideshow of aspects of her property which couldn't be included in her main garden tour video
• June 23 - Homegrown Habitat for Native Plants and Wildlife

2019 Vienna/Oakton Garden Tour Makes a Splash!

The 2019 Sustainable Garden Tour was held on Sunday, June 9 and featured nine homes and community areas in Vienna and Oakton. Each year, the Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District highlights sustainable gardens and watershed-friendly projects in Fairfax County through our Sustainable Garden Tour. Local residents open their gardens and share their experiences landscaping with natural resources in mind. Homes on the garden tour have voluntarily installed conservation practices such as rain gardens, porous pavers, pollinator gardens, and other practices that not only help conserve soil and water, but are also environmentally friendly.

NVSWCD staff and tour site hosts prepared for the event by creating maps of sustainable features on the site, labeling native plants, and creating plant lists for those who were interested in obtaining them. And on Sunday, the day of the garden tour, it began to rain!

While rain at any other event would scare away the crowd, if anything, the weather attracted more participants to the Garden Tour to see sustainable drainage and erosion control features in action! At the Kahn-Furlong Residence, visitors saw how the homeowners dealt with runoff from their neighbors on a downhill slope by covering the terraced slope in native plants. Visitors at the Hoffman Residence observed the water moving into their newly built rain garden. One visitor commented that she was glad that the rain gave her the opportunity to see a rain garden fill and understand the impact it might have in her landscape.

The Holtz Residence featured not only the homeowner’s front yard conservation landscaping project but also hosted several Boy and Girl Scouts who had worked with the homeowner to accomplish conservation projects. They presented projects on reducing plastic pollution, establishing monarch butterfly habitat, and invasive plant removal. Flint Hill Elementary School had several sites located around the school where knowledgeable students spoke about the sustainable garden features established by the students and used in their learning. One of these tour guides proclaimed that his favorite thing in the courtyard was a small pond that had turtles and frogs.

In all, 182 hosts, volunteers, and visitors took part in this year’s Sustainable Garden Tour. The engagement we saw from the community was inspiring, and we hope to see more sustainable gardening practices installed in Fairfax County as a result of this program and programs like it.