HJ News Article: 1st Annual Garden Walk

Cache Garden Club plans first garden tour

ANDREW WEEKS staff writer

The Cache Garden Club will hold its first Cache Valley Garden Walk this Saturday.

The self-guided tour, which goes from 8 a.m. to noon, will feature seven gardens at locations in Amalga, Logan, Smithfield and River Heights. People can visit the sites to learn about garden priorities and techniques.

Dave Marcyes, the garden club’s founder and president – also known around the valley as Dave Dave-said the seven gardens on the list came aboutafter Helen Kirkman, one of the organizers of the event, put word out on social media, asked club members if they’d like to participate and otherwise networked to come up with the list Kirkman and Donya Harvey, another organizer, viewed the yards and picked the top seven – a number that Marces calls “perfect number” for the tour.

The gardens listed include:

  • 2260 W. 6200 North, Amalga
  • 82 Crocket Ave., Logan
  • 280 Eastridge Lane, Logan
  • 333 Redfox Trace, Logan
  • 369 E. 800 South, Smithfield
  • 499 W. 200 South, Smithfield
  • 517 S. 750 East (Griffin Lane), River Heights

Marcyes said this will be the club’s only garden tour for 2023

“It is too late in the season for others,” he said, but “we are blessed to get it for 2023 before the first freeze.”

Looking ahead, he said the plan is to “mix up” the tour months in the future.

“Different yards are at their best at different times of the season, so we want to showcase vards in different times of the summer,” he said, explaining the annual tours will be scheduled between June and August -“a different month each year.”

Marces started the Cache Garden Club earlier this year and since its launch has watched its membership grow among valley residents.

In a previous interview with The Herald Journal, Marcyes, becoming a little teary-eyed as he shared his vision for the club in March, said gardening is the one thing he has found that breaks down barriers, if only temporarily, where people come together in agreement and shared joy.

There are no politics in the garden, for instance, he said. No matter what differences people may have, in the garden everyone is alike. Everyone shares the same passion.

He said the club was a long time coming, noting he waited at least 10 years for someone else to start such a club. When that didn’t happen, he decided to jump in and do it.

“I didn’t want to do it,” he said in March. “I’ve been waiting for someone else to do it, but I just felt it was time.

Before moving to Cache Valley, Marcyes was part of a garden club in Spokane, Washington, and said the one he created here is patterned after that one. The club encompasses all things gardening, among them flowers, vegetables, insect and soil topics and water conservation.

Saturday’s garden tour is free to the public and there is no order in which to visit the sites – “people can show up anytime between 8 a.m. and noon,’ he said.

However, Marcyes said there will be a musical garden presentation at 9 a.m. at Logan’s 82 Crocket Avenue location.

He said it is not the objective of the tour to award winners or prizes.

He did say, however, the club hopes to present a “Garden of the Month” from June-August, possibly starting next year.

These yards will be on an entry basis, promoted all around the valley with judges choosing a winner each month,” he said.

“The winners of ‘Garden of the Month’ will generally be invited to participate in the next Annual Valley Tour.”