ROCKLAND — Our Neighbors’ Gardens tour of private and not-so-private gardens will be held June 28 in Rockland. Though the 2015 fundraiser event, sponsored by Friends of Rockland Public Library, would normally not occur in the every-other-year tour rotation, the Friends decided to organize the extra event, anyway.

Chairman of the Garden Tour Planning Committee Katharine Treptow Farrell attributed the lag in last year’s ticket sales to the fact that the Atlantic Blues Festival had been scheduled for the same weekend, July 12, 2014. 

”I think we were looking at totally different target audiences there, and the town was congested,” Farrell said.

As a solution, this year’s event, scheduled for a couple weeks earlier, will be in a different bloom time. And, as always, will showcase properties not highlighted in recent years.

Tour participants travel at their leisure to the locations, which include five private gardens, three historic inns (Limerock, Berry Manor, and Old Granite), and Ripples Inn on the Harbor.

The Friends decided on the theme ‘Pocket Gardens’ in reflection of the tenth-of-an-acre plots of land residents tend to work with in the backyards of Rockland.

However small, each garden is unique.

As Farrell sat in a downstairs boardroom of the library, she spoke of one particular garden highlighted this year. Along with flowers and shrubs, the gardener focuses primarily on vegetables.

“What always caught my eye was how beautiful the vegetable garden was,” she said. “It’s just gorgeous.”

The garden beds on the tour range from decorative petals and sculptures to edible herbs, from amateur to professional, from creative to useful and economic.

For those whose thumbs are not naturally green, and for those whose gardens never thrive on the rocky coast of Maine, the tour is an opportunity to learn by example.

“It’s nice to see what you can actually do with a small amount of space,” Farrell said.

The Friends encourage gardeners of each tour stop to talk with tour ticketholders during the event. Volunteers helping the Friends (volunteers are still needed) will also be on hand at each stop to check tickets and give directions.

All proceeds of the event go to the Friends of Public Library, which pays for all children’s materials at the library, the inner library loan program, helping to underwrite the cards of RSU 13 students not residing in Rockland, sponsoring evening programs, and operating the used bookstore in the library’s basement, “which contributes about 30 percent of the Friends overall budget,” Farrell said. “The rest of it comes from other forms of fundraising, like garden tours and book sales.”

The Friends held a book, bake, plant sale Saturday, June 13. The plant portion of the event sold more than twice that of last year, according to Farrell. Farrell believes that was due to more extensive advertising.  The book sale and bake sale sold the same number of items as last year.

Brochures for this year’s Our Neighbors’ Gardens tour can be found at the Rockland Public Library. Tickets are $12 in advance or $15 on June 28. The tour takes place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.