About Us
Revived and reimagined in 2024, this radically inclusive event is free and open to the public. We invite our friends and neighbors to explore the diversity of blooms and harvest bounties we cultivate. We seek to foster community, encourage residents of all ages to dig in the dirt, learn about plants, pollinators, and the environment, and be inspired by nature.
This open-garden tour showcases multiple styles of landscape design from the formal to the feral with varying objectives and experience levels at 40+ locations around the city. Participating gardens may be found in front yards, backyards, side yards, and creative verdant place-making spaces at residences, businesses, and places of worship. A map, list of sites, and brief description of each garden are available here.
New for 2025 is a Resource Fair with government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and small business vendors with information tables, interactive demos, garden-related products, and more! Resource partners will be disbursed throughout the garden sites and labeled in the listing and map.
Still confused about the concept? Think of this as Halloween for plant people. Everyone can participate as a host or attendee. Is there enough time to see every garden? No, of course not, but you can't trick or treat at every house in the neighborhood in one night either. We provide robust descriptions and filters to plan your experience. If you miss a garden, look for it next year or maybe be neighborly and if you see someone out watering, tending, or weeding, ask if you can take a look.
Feel free to RSVP on Facebook and share this event with your friends, neighbors, and community groups.
Leadership
Co-Chair
Committee Members
Co-Chair
Andrew Berg,
Co-Chair and Executive Producer, revived the Oak Park Garden Tour in 2024 with a vision of radical inclusivity focused on Growing Verdant Vibrant Community. A first-time homeowner after 15 years living in Chicago apartments without even a flower pot, his Norse Prairie Homestead features over 220 species of Michigan native pla
Andrew Berg,
Co-Chair and Executive Producer, revived the Oak Park Garden Tour in 2024 with a vision of radical inclusivity focused on Growing Verdant Vibrant Community. A first-time homeowner after 15 years living in Chicago apartments without even a flower pot, his Norse Prairie Homestead features over 220 species of Michigan native plants with 1600 individual flowers, grasses, sedges, ferns, shrubs, and trees plus 4 rain barrels. His landscape designs include a rain garden, pollinator prairie, shade savanna, woodland understory, and shrub thicket. Additionally, he has vegetables, berry bushes, and 21 dwarf fruit trees.
The Norse Prairie name is an homage to his Norwegian immigrant ancestors who were sodbusters in North Dakota, breaking through the dense and deep root systems of some of the very same native prairie grasses and flowers he has reintroduced to the land he stewards. The son of a wildlife biologist and a librarian who taught him to seek knowledge and serve others, he looks softly at the plants, animals, and passing of the seasons in his gardens.
By day, Andrew is the Chief Development Officer at Detroit Opera and also enjoys cycling, paddleboarding, and anything active outside. He is the proud father of two children, ages 13 and 11, with whom he plants, waters, and tends the earth with curiosity and gratitude. His current favorite wildflower is Prairie Smoke (Geum triflorum), the first of his full-sun flowers to emerge in the spring with Seussian whimsy and joy.
Contact: andrew@oakparkgardentour.com
Co-Chair
Committee Members
Co-Chair
Sarah Tanner,
Co-Chair and Creative Director
I am preceded by generations of gardeners, scouts, conservationists, and lovers of the natural world who never missed an opportunity to educate about interconnection and stewardship. You could say, gardening is in me, heart and soul.
My winding life journey has provided an array of opportunites
Sarah Tanner,
Co-Chair and Creative Director
I am preceded by generations of gardeners, scouts, conservationists, and lovers of the natural world who never missed an opportunity to educate about interconnection and stewardship. You could say, gardening is in me, heart and soul.
My winding life journey has provided an array of opportunites for hands-on experience in community gardening (guerilla & sanctioned), composting (from backyard & vermiculture to windrows & toilets), and midscale farming (urban, traditional, & permaculture). But, most of my experience came through my co-passion and profession of culinary arts in the form of food co-ops, farm-to-table, ethical catering, farmers markets & community kitchens, and a vegan restaurant in downtown Detroit boasting both pre- and post- consumer composting opening far before it’s time in 2006.
Everywhere life’s taken me, there has been a garden. These days, I gratefully spend time continuing to steward and imagine the garden my grandmother designed for her Master Gardener’s certification in ‘88. It is our family’s sanctuary. We continue to live in the space, spending as much time outdoors as in, enjoying our four-season, lawnless, 360, mixed-style garden, featuring natives and exotics. The kids enjoy playing in the 3 rain barrels, growing vegetables, and “going on a bear hunt” through the forest path best.
Contact: sarah@oakparkgardentour.com
Committee Members
Committee Members
Committee Members
Coming soon!
Donate
To keep this event radically inclusive, we charge no admission for attendees and no registration fee for garden hosts. As such, we rely on donations to support our costs in web hosting, graphic design, print and digital advertising, yard signs, flyers, and more.