Annandale homeowners highlighted on Sustainable Garden Tour

The 2020 Sustainable Garden Tour features 11 incredible
gardens from all over Fairfax County, including a native garden oasis and
wildlife habitat created by Annandale residents Jeanne Kadet and Mike
Perel.

The annual garden tour, sponsored by the Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District, is virtual this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A presentation on the gardens will be live on Zoom June 25 at 2 p.m.
Register here.

The Perel/Kadet home in the Oak Hill neighborhood not only
features a front-yard vegetable garden, many kinds of flowers, and a water feature, it has an outdoor model train running through the backyard.

The train tracks and some of the buildings are weatherproof
and stay out all the time, but the trains only come out when the weather is nice.
Sometimes the train cars carry nuts for the squirrels.

Jeanne, a retired psychotherapist, is a Green Spring Extension Master Gardener, Fairfax Master Naturalist, and represents the Braddock District on the Fairfax County Tree Commission. 

As an Audubon
at Home Ambassador, Jeanne provides free advice to
homeowners on how they can transform their yard into a more habitat-friendly
environment. 

Mike is a Master Food Volunteer with the Virginia Cooperative Extension and has concentrated on
gardening since retiring from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

He created a vegetable
garden in a raised bed made of leftover plastic decking. The spring crop,
planted in March, includes strawberries, radishes, arugula, mesclun, Swiss
chard, kale, parsley, golden beets, and sugar snap peas. The garden is enclosed with poultry wire to keep out deer, rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks.

“Being able to grow some of one’s
own food is especially helpful these days when it’s not so easy to get to the grocery store for fresh produce,” Jeanne says.

Jeanne and Mike are gradually adding native plants, removing
invasive non-natives, reducing the lawn area, and letting moss grow naturally
in the shade. 

“Using native plants definitely
helps the pollinators, birds, and local wildlife survive by providing the food
they need from the plants they rely on, and it’s fun for us to see all the cool
creatures that find their way to our yard,” Jeanne says.

She’s seen a rare butterfly called a long-tailed skipper in
the garden, as well as frogs, turtles, snakes, and many birds.

This year’s Sustainable Garden Tour is being held in partnership with the Fairfax Food Council’s Urban Agriculture Working Group to highlight front-yard gardens and edible landscapes.