The Sonoma County Race features a 3K and 10K run and walk through Howarth and Spring Lake Parks, rain or shine.

Click here to donate to the Sonoma County Human Race!

(photo by Bob Cornelis)  The 15th Annual Western Sonoma Home & Garden Tour is scheduled for May 16, 2010.  Join us at unique sites at this exciting and diverse tour. Start your tour day off with a free cup of coffee or mate from Sunshine Coffee Roasters in Forestville or Sebastopol. Then off to view locations usually unavailable to the general public.

Volunteer docents will be available at each site to answer questions about the location and about Food For Thought Food Bank.  Garden and architecture enthusiasts come from all over the Bay Area to enjoy thoughtful gardens and inspiring homes.

Tickets for the event are $45 and include a booklet with information on the homes and gardens, as well as a map. The self-guided tour will take place between 10a.m. and 5p.m. across more than six sites throughout western Sonoma County.  Tickets will be on sale from April 15, 2010 and garden lovers should highlight this date as the event regularly sells out!

The auction is one of the organization’s biggest fundraising events, funding a substantial part of the food budget. In fact, it has historically been Sonoma County’s single largest HIV/AIDS fundraising event.

This event happens through the efforts of board members, volunteers, and Food For Thought staff.  Items are donated by private individuals and established businesses, such as the Zentner Collection in Emeryville, Green Fish Trading, Gado Gado, and Cokas-Diko, all in Santa Rosa, and Far West Trading Co. in Graton.

There are always unusual items.

Financial support for the event happens in many ways. Underwriting in the form of business and individual sponsorships helps to defray the costs of the event, donated items create the inventory for the sale, and of course, buyers create the excitement that marks the auction. Food for Thought offers special thanks to Russell Wherrit of Sebastopol, the auction’s founding organizer, who has offered to match this year’s auction underwriting.  If you are interested in becoming a corporate or individual sponsor, please contact Lisa Longhurst at (707) 887-1647.

On the block will be a collection of fine quality American, Asian and European antiques, collectibles and art from around the world, oriental rugs, fine wines, furniture and

decorative accessories, luxury vacations, restaurant dinners and many other desirable items.

Food For Thought also owns FFT Antiques & Collectibles, at 2701 Gravenstein Hwy. South in Sebastopol.  All profits from the store support the work of Food For Thought.

For more information, or to donate items, contact Allen Chivens at FFT Antiques (707) 823-3101 or by email at info@fftfoodbank.org.

In addition to the gracious property owners who shared their homes and gardens with us, lots of other people helped to make the day a success.

Sponsors provided financial underwriting for the event, and more than 50 volunteers worked to make everyone feel welcome and keep things running smoothly.

Here are descriptions and pictures from each site so you can take a virtual tour:

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1. St. Dizier/Penner Residence, Forestville
2. Spirit Hill Farm, Graton
3. Grace Ranch, Graton
4. French Garden Farm, between Sebastopol and Occidental
5. McAuliffe Resident, Sebastopol
6. Truax/Whiteman Residence, Freestone
7. Simpkins-Wright Residence, Sebastopol

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Our thanks to the gracious individuals and businesses who helped to underwrite our
14th Annual Western Sonoma County Spring Home & Garden Tour

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Madrone

Kate Anchordoguy Landscaping, Inc.
California Food Connections
Shirley Liberman and Margaret Livingston
Sonoma West Times & News
Sprint Copy Center

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Dogwood

Tom Boag and Ralph Hamblin
Janet Cahill
John and Patricia Dervin
Pearson & Co.
Charles Wagner and Thomas Culp

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Rhododendron

Bill Batchelor
Gene Bonino and Will Brown
Lyle Mary Bullock
Gar Cross and George White
Gary Eisman
Yusuf Erskine
Pamela Gray
Sharon Huyck
Steve Isaacson
Katherine Kendall and Peaches Henning
Patricia Menicucci
Mike Menius and Ken Harlan
Screamin’ Mimi’s
Elizabeth Theiss
Dee and Dan Whickham
Sandy Younglove

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This year, as Food For Thought celebrates the 20^th anniversary of its founding, Spirit Hill Farm is celebrating its 100^th birthday.

As times have changed, so has this farm. Of the nearly 160 acres that comprised the farm in 1909, only 2.5 remain.

Owner and partners Niko Preovolos and Bill Vanderlind live on this small, but still working, farm that produces apples, olives and hydrangeas. When not busy tending the gardens and fraternizing with the chickens, Niko runs an architectural and garden design firm, Dwelling Point Design, and Bills works as an ICU nurse.

The house at Spirit Hill is iconic to many local people because of its prominent position on a curve on Mill  Station Rd., and many local people watched with delight as the sadly neglected buildings were repaired and renovated by the owners over a three-year period, brining them functionally into this century, but keeping the spirit of the old farm intact. The gardens and pool were new additions to the property in 2002 and are framed by the apple orchard and neighboring vineyard.

Not long after the renovation was completed, the house and new garden were featured on our garden tour.  This year, the now-mature garden and the property’s innovative two-bedroom guesthouse are highlighted. The guesthouse is built into what could be described as a “typical Sonoma County farm building”. It features a modern interior belying its rustic shell. A concrete floor is continuous throughout the central room, bedrooms, and bath. The open floor plan includes a kitchen. The décor is playful, with a tropical theme, including vintage-appearing Hawaiian tourist prints, a local artist’s painting of a hula girl, and a grass skirt on master bedroom’s bed.

Note: The Dwelling Point Design portfolio contains additional pictures of this home, and also of Grace Ranch, another Graton home on our tour.

At both Spirit Hill Farm and Grace Ranch, the designer utilized artwork on sliding tracks to disguise media equipment.

The newly completed Grace Ranch, set on a rise above the idyllic Green Valley, used to be part of a 20-acre dairy where cows roamed the gentle hillside. The site is now home to a spectacular modern farmhouse, new gardens, and an arbequina olive orchard.

On a 2005 visit to Graton, the property’s now-owner fell in love with western Sonoma County and decided to make it her home. In 2006 she purchased the 2-acre parcel, which included a cobbled together farmhouse, 30 diseased pine trees, a gorgeous red barn, and several beautiful old dairy buildings, and went to work. She enlisted the designer/owner of neighboring Spirit Hill Farm (also on the tour) to create a modern interpretation of a classic farmhouse, which she now calls home. The guest bedroom wing incorporates part of the original structure.

The spectacular 4,400 square foot home is spacious and amenity-rich, yet warm and inviting, giving a respectful nod to its roots as a farmhouse. Wood-planked walls, lots of windows, and hand-made pine flooring are all accented with burnished and rusted steel. This is a farmhouse designed for gracious modern living.

Folk art and works by local artists abound in the house, and while much of it is in the same grand scale as the home, smaller folksy details add texture throughout.

In addition to a spectacular interior, this home offers an opportunity to see the form of a well-planned garden before it’s fully filled-in. Behind the rusty corrugated metal fence, and down an antiqued concrete walkway, lies a cottage garden in the making. Additional garden structures include built-in planter boxes, a fountain, artfully-placed sculpture, and an enclosed patio off one of the guest bedrooms built to eventually contain an outdoor shower.

When Dan Smith and Joan Marler purchased this 30-acre property 25 years ago, it was mostly covered in an apple orchard. In the first years, they harvested and sold apples, mostly to an organic baby food producer. But the orchards were aging and they began to clear the older trees, and prune back the younger ones.

For the past four years, Dan has actively farmed five acres of the property, which has one of the most breath-taking views in Sonoma County, tucked into a cleft in the hills between Sebastopol and Freestone. The hillside farm provides produce for the couples’ French Garden Restaurant in Sebastopol, and the surplus is sold at farm markets.

At the time of the tour, the farm will be providing fava beans, frisee, escarole, potatoes, leeks, spring onions, garlic, shallots, Swiss chard, artichokes, English peas, three kinds of carrots (finger, rainbow and Imperator), and three kinds of beets – golden, red, and striped Chioggas. Additonally, it produces fruit, including apples (Gravenstein and golden), peaches, plums, and pears, as well as raspberries, currants, gooseberries, and blackberries. Bee hives produce honey fragrant with the nectar of nearby eucalyptus trees and blackberries.

The farm, which employs two additional workers, is drip irrigated with T-Tape, a very fine, thin, but strong, polyethylene tubing that conserves water by delivering it directly to the plants.

The owners haven’t overlooked beauty for function and food. The farm grows cutting flowers including foxglove, chrysanthemums, spider mums, larkspur, and assorted sunflower varieties. In the center of the farm, the owners have built a large, traditional wooden barn that serves as headquarters for the farm’s projects and also provides a comfortable gathering space. A decorative area nearby features a lawn and arbor.

Evocative of an old Spanish Colonial hacienda, with a courtyard, wooden shutters on the outside to keep out the heat, and thick earthen walls, this 3,5000-square-foot home was created to meet the exact taste and specifications of the owner/designer. In fact, Karen McAuliffe’s touches are everywhere: in the stained glass she designed and had custom fabricated, in her handiwork on finish of the the living-room fireplace, and in the custom cabinetry that is opened seasonally to display a lighted Christmas village above the glass-fronted library.

But for all of the interesting details, the house has a green core, built using a style of earth wall construction called pneumatically impacted stabilized earth or PISE. These 18-inch thick walls of rock, dirt, and cement result in an adobe-like structure, with deeply recessed windows, and year-round temperature control.

The home’s design is the result of architectural elements picked up from the couple’s travels in Spain, Mexico, Italy, and France – coffered ceilings, arched doors, tile floors, interior and exterior shutters, and French doors.

This home appeared on our tour in 2000, the year the building was completed. At that time, it sat in its country setting, mostly devoid of landscaping. Now visitors are invited to see how this home has melded with its environment. The gardens feature a partially enclosed front courtyard with a palm tree and yuccas. Two sequoia trees and a redwood tree give vertical emphasis and shade, and mock orange and azaleas offer spring color. A second courtyard behind the house is home to climbing roses and built-in raised beds with annuals. A rock waterfall and stream alongside the house lead to a lower pond with a rose garden nearby. The surrounding area has become lush and green, framing the view of the meadow that completes their four-acre parcel.

Hidden down a private lane in the hills above Freestone, this 35-acre property is a serene oasis. The house and garden are flanked by a five-acre olive orchard and a 10-acre vineyard. The vineyard’s grapes are used by Lynmar Estate Winery to make vineyard-designate wines, bottled under Lynmar’s vineyard designate Zephyr Farms label (Pinot and Chardonnay), and the olive oil is bottled for the owners’ private use.

The vertical structure of the garden is provided by old native sequoia, oak, and fir trees. There is a formality to the layout of the garden, which is divided into multiple rooms with an extensive array of shrubbery. This is a garden that makes use of the textures of herbaceous plants in all their glory. Many of the shrubs bloom and are intensely fragrant in the spring. Planting en masse has allowed the owners to meet the scale of their sweeping vista. Camellias, rhododendrons, magnolias, mock orange, hydrangea, and osmanthus mingle in the borders, providing a tapestry of leaf shapes in the full spectrum of green. One of the garden rooms has a swimming pool set into the lawn, doubling as a reflecting pool, another has a pergola and outdoor dining area.

A cook’s garden spills over with lettuces, arugula, tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, asparagus, chard, and peas, all accented by herbs, including rosemary, oregano, tarragon, chervil.

The owners emphasize that continuous deer fencing around the entire parcel’s perimeter makes it possible to grow such a wide variety of plants with impunity.

The original house was built in the 1940s and has been extensively remodeled by the owners during the 15 years they’ve lived there. Originally four bedrooms, the house is now used as a two-bedroom home, with a private study for each of the occupants. The last remodeling updated the kitchen to a cook’s dream, with Calcutta Oro marble countertops, Sub-Zero appliances, a Wolf range, and custom cabinetry. In an old-world touch, the kitchen also includes a fireplace.

While Steve Whiteman oversees the vineyard, orchard, and plantings, Bob Truax is a professional lighting designer. You can see his design portfolio on the Truax Design Group website and products at No. 8 Lighting.

When this house first appeared on our tour in 2006, the owners had put two years of work into rebuilding a neglected garden, and renovating a 1912 farmhouse. This year, they invite you to visit their latest project, a 35×50 foot addition to the garden – what might be described as the penultimate vegetable and flower garden.

As attractive as it is functional, the garden is edged with eight-foot deer fencing topped with wood finials. The interior is completely gopher-proofed – no easy feat in Sonoma County! Nine raised beds, four corner beds, two cutting beds, and nine wine-barrel planters provide plenty of room for growing vegetables, herbs, and flowers. The space between beds is covered in Sonoma gold gravel, an attractive, warm surface that reflects both light and heat to the garden’s plants. The raised beds are capped with redwood plank benches, eliminating the need for the owner/gardeners to stoop. The garden includes a flagstone seating area, and a surface-mounted porcelain bowl sink with a spigot that looks like an old-fashioned hand-pump.

Situated on approximately five acres, this home enjoys a remarkable sense of privacy. In both the house, and the garden, nooks and small rooms abound, and surprises wait around every corner. The mature trees that provided the original bones of the garden have been filled in with perennials, including herbaceous salvias, peonies, and bearded iris.

Gathering areas make this a wonderful garden for entertaining. These areas include a seating around an outdoor fireplace under a pergola, a garden room with a fountain, and a hillside seating area with a beautiful western view. A rock-edged in-ground swimming pool blends so beautifully with the front garden that it almost looks like a natural pond.

While much of the house has been artfully preserved, remodeling the upstairs modernized the master bedroom suite to include a new bathroom and sunroom. A highlight of the kitchen is their Aga Cooker, an English-made stored heat stove and cooking unit.

Note: The owners are partners in Wright-Simpkins Interior Designs, Incorporated.