Menu
Log in

Los Jardineros

Garden Club 0f Taos

Meetings & Events

 
Meetings are usually held every 3rd Thursday (February - October) at Taos Tennis (Highway 150) in the meeting room at the back of the clubhouse starting at 9:30am for coffee and socializing.  The business meeting starts at 10am, followed by the featured presentation.

Upcoming events

    • Thursday, July 17, 2025
    • 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM
    • Taos Tennis Meeting Room, 88 State Road 150, El Prado
    Register

    We are lucky to have Lori Priest for our July meeting speaker.  For those who have visited Lori’s gardens in the past, we know to expect a wide variety of unusual plants. She is coming to the meeting with these to show us some unique arrangements she is fashioning this summer. Lori is a collector, a rescuer, and an experimenter. This meeting you will get to see her designing skills using the fruits of her garden labors .

    Monthly Los Jardineros meetings are open to the public, so invite a friend who might be interested in permaculture, growing food intensive gardens or in joining Los Jardineros.

    • Saturday, July 19, 2025
    • Ranchos de Taos
    Join waitlist

    In 1835 Feliberto and Isabelita Martinez built their adobe home and sheep farm on a part of the Cristobal de la Serna Land Grant of 1715, one of the oldest land grants in the Taos Valley. Years ago, the Martinez family owned the land from what is now Highway 68 all the way west to Tom Holder Rd. and south across the valley. The adobe house sits in the “Y” of 2 forking roads and follows the Rio Grande del Ranchos along its southern boundary. The home stayed in the Martinez family for many generations. Several of Feliberto and Isabelita’s descendants still have homes adjacent to the property and down the valley. Because the home was continuously occupied since 1835, it has undergone many alterations over the years. There were originally two additional rooms to the north that were demolished 35 or more years ago. One can envision the house growing in a linear fashion over time, adding room after room, as the size of the family grew.

    What is today the Casita was originally an animal (sheep) barn. Old adobes have a special magic to them. Made of the earth around you, their thick walls and quirky layouts bring a special character and comfort for those who live in them. For anyone interested, a reconstructed drawing of the original floor plan and elevations are on a table under the portal.

    About the Gardens

    I bought the house and gardens 20 years ago from Susan Blevins, an avid and masterful gardener herself. For many years she was an integral part of Los Jardineros and hosted many garden club events and other community events in her gardens. I came to Taos after the death of my husband, looking for my own private sanctuary. I sought to create a place “a world apart” as a place of respite and healing. Over time, I greatly expanded the gardens, adding walls, additional secluded courtyards with changing views, adding an autocourt, planting new beds, and building walkways and seating throughout the gardens.

    Most of the beds are planted with perennials that dependably return year after year. The beds are a mix of native perennials and shrubs, native grasses, and other climate-appropriate perennials as well as self-seeding annuals (such as California poppies, cosmos, larkspur, bachelor buttons, sunflowers, and milkweeds, and self-seeding perennials like our native columbine). There is an abundance of vines such as Virginia creeper, varieties of clematis, wisteria, vining roses and 2 arbors of grape vines. There are specific rose gardens, many areas of groundcovers, fruit trees (peaches, apricots, apples, and plums), native trees (locusts, ash, spruce, juniper and pinon) and some specimen trees like weeping cypress, weeping Siberian pea shrub, crab apple, Japanese maple, and a giant weeping spruce that resembles either a character from Dr. Seuss or Sessame Street’s big Snuffleupagus. The perennials are ranged to bloom across the seasons from the earliest Spring naturalized bulbs of narcissus, hyacinths, and tulips, to colorful late Fall grasses.

    There are two large, raised stone beds specifically used for vegetable gardening but currently paused and planted in groundcovers of clover for green manure and weed suppression. The walls around the gardens help to mitigate the strong winds sweeping across the mesa and lower valley. The irrigation is comprised of low emitters and drip tubing. I hope you enjoy the tour.

    This year we are requesting a modest $10 registration fee from members to attend each of these tours as a means of fundraising. The funds raised will benefit the operations of the club and will provide resources for community projects. Each member will be encouraged to bring free guests to attend each tour in the hopes that this exposure will incentivize increased membership.  There will be a need for up to 3 docents.  If you sign up as a docent, you will not pay $10 and you will assist with parking and/or guiding visitors around the garden.

    • Thursday, August 07, 2025
    • 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM
    • UNM Taos

    Join us as we learn about the UNM landscape and bee keeping projects.  There will be a talk and a walking tour of these projects.  Reservations will open two weeks before the event date.


    • Thursday, August 21, 2025
    • 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM
    • Taos Tennis Meeting Room, 88 State Road 150, El Prado
    Register


    Monthly Los Jardineros meetings are open to the public, so invite a friend who might be interested in joining Los Jardineros.

    • Saturday, August 23, 2025
    • Blueberry Hill Road

    You are invited to participate in the Blueberry Hill Vistas Garden Tour.  Enter through a flower-filled courtyard with locally-made custom steel planters. Enjoy the multi-level sunken patio featuring boulders and a waterfall. Then explore the surrounding elevated berm gardens. See what tons of rocks can do to a landscape! A beautiful variety of plants have been added to the gardens featuring native, xeric and climate-appropriate selections.

    • Saturday, September 06, 2025
    • 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM

    You are invited to participate in the Oasis Garden Tour.  Reservations will open 2 weeks before the tour.

    • Saturday, September 06, 2025
    • 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
    • Ranchos De Taos

    Finding reasons to be outside became the catalyst for the creation of a succession of patio and pathway projects, each intended to capture a particular mountain view, the expanse of the plateau, Taos lights, the sun rising or setting, or shelter in the shade. The Homeowner began 5 years ago creating a border of shrubs and perennials along the eastern and southern edges. That first winter they did much of the hardscape and added what I call the Winter Sunset Patio, surrounded by a low wall intended to look like old ruins. The eastern perennial and annuals garden was planted the following year after building a wall and fence, as well as another patio and pathways which lead around the three sections. Three years ago the northern garden, patio, walkway and entrance trellis was built.  Last year the final western facing section was created with a small patio beneath a cottonwood tree, a pathway boarded on both sides with perennials, leading to the garden trellis entrance.This spring they removed a small section of the eastern garden and two raised beds, excavating for a pond.

    One of the greatest things about a garden to the Homeowners is how they can recreate and reimagine it each year, a favored activity they wish never loses its appeal.

    This year we are requesting a modest $10 registration fee from members to attend each of these tours as a means of fundraising. The funds raised will benefit the operations of the club and will provide resources for community projects. Each member will be encouraged to bring one non-paying guest to attend each tour in the hopes that this exposure will incentivize increased membership.  There will be a need for up to 3 docents.  If you sign up as a docent, you will not pay $10 and you will assist with parking and/or guiding visitors around the garden.


    • Sunday, September 14, 2025
    • 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
    • Arroyo Seco

    You are invited to participate in the Artistic Garden Tour.  Reservations will open 2 weeks before the tour.

    • Thursday, September 18, 2025
    • 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM
    • Taos Tennis Meeting Room, 88 State Road 150, El Prado
    Register


    Monthly Los Jardineros meetings are open to the public, so invite a friend who might be interested in joining Los Jardineros.

    • Thursday, October 16, 2025
    • 11:00 AM - 1:30 PM
    Register



Powered by Wild Apricot Membership Software