One day a year, Marion’s hidden gardens are opened to the botanically inclined for St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church’s annual Gardens by the Sea Tour.

Now in its eleventh year, the event is a church fundraiser where all proceeds are donated to global and local outreach programs. It was held on July 12.

The self-guided tour began at the Olde Captain Hadley House where visitors purchased tickets and picked up maps showing the way to ocean-side estates, Marion village homes, and the Sippican School Community Garden Club.

Hanna Milench, the tour’s chairperson and a church member, said the gardens’ natural splendor draws people from across the South Coast each year.

“They are all beautiful gardens. I can’t say which one is more beautiful than the others,” Milench said. “It’s incredible how generous our neighbors have been.” To find participants, Milench will ask garden owners to have their home be a tour stop. Sometimes, volunteers ask to be part of the event.

This year, all the featured gardens are new to the tour. Six families and one community group volunteered to participate.

On Piney Point Road, the Stern family’s garden features a lawn that gently slopes toward the sea bordered by bright blue hydrangeas. A babbling brook and homegrown vegetables are also part of the garden.

“I have learned through trial and error how to grow my own vegetables from seeds that I have harvested from the prior seasons. There may be no greater joy than a tomato fresh off the vine,” Wendy Stern wrote in a pamphlet given to visitors.

At the Sippican School Community Garden, visitors entered through an archway complete with a grapevine donated from Eden’s Landscaping.

This spring, the garden received new plant beds, compost bins, blueberry bushes and other improvements.

Garden Coordinator Diane Cook said students have been busy tending the garden. On Friday, garden club members Gwen Miedema and Daphne Poirier gave tours to those interested.

They showed the pole beans planted beneath a tripod with a unique pest deterrent.

“You might be wondering why we have a plastic snake,” Gwen, who is entering the sixth grade, said. “We hung it there to scare away the rabbits. So far it’s been working.”

An abundance of leafy greens were next on the tour.

“We also have kale,” Daphne, a first year garden club member, said.

“We have tons of kale,” Gwen said.

One of the perks of being in the garden club is sampling the fresh fruits and vegetables, but only when the time is right.

“The grapes are not yet ripe,” Daphne said. “I do not suggest trying them.”

Ditto for the blueberries.

“I assure you, I tried them, they are really sour,” Gwen said.

At another stop, church members Mary Pierce and Shirley Thomas greeted visitors entering the Pappalardo family's garden on Moorings Road.

“We are blessed to have enthusiastic garden owners willing to share the fruits of their labors,” Pierce, who has volunteered at the tour for 10 years, said.

Inside the property, Christine Bailey, of Norton, and Grace Baron, of Marion, took photographs and admired the landscape.

Bailey, a garden designer, came to see what other gardeners have done regarding design and plant placement. “The gardens, whether they are large or small, are all well done. I like the variety,” Bailey said.

“I’m the lucky person who goes along for the ride with someone who can point out everything,” Baron, a church member, joked. Baron added the garden owners are very generous for being part of the tour and offered thanks.

Good weather, coupled with the beauty of the garden, left Bailey grateful: “It’s so nice to be here.”