The 16^th Annual Danville-Alamo-Walnut Creek Branch of AAUW’s Garden Tour was very successful. We sold 458 tickets and at least 400 attended- even with it raining on both days. It is the first time that it has rained during any of our garden tours but it didn’t stop our guests. They were out there with their umbrellas.

The board had asked to get every member involved and so many did rally- either as docents, making homemade goodies, donating to AAUW Fund, driving the shuttle, creating baskets to be raffled, helping with the administration- putting up directional signs, taking photos of the gardens, creating our postcards and tickets, managing our ticket sales, etc. Each one of you lead very busy lives so thanks so much for helping making this tour a success.It looks like we will have a $17,000 profit that can help fund our Danville-Alamo-Walnut Creek 45^th Anniversary American Fellowship. Until now, we have donated $50,052 and need $149,948 to complete it.

There are a few members that I want to single out to give special thanks to:

• Linda Reeve and Carol Varian, both members, for sharing their gardens
• Bette Felton for being our refreshment chair, making fresh lemonade from her own lemons and providing a welcoming environment to all of our guests
• Dora-Thea Porter for creating our beautiful postcard and ticket
• Marian Bliss for putting together a photo composite that every garden owner truly appreciates
• May Mix and Marcia Steinhardt for managing our ticket sales through the mail, East Bay Flowers and Paypal
• Head docents: Mary Granzotto, Bev Nidick, Susan Terzuoli, Liz Williams and Pat DeRensis for recruiting their own docents, communicating with the garden owners and making sure that our guests had the best experience that they could
• Julie Grisham and AAUW Fund chair, Carol Highton, for creating thirteen very distinctive baskets to be raffled
• Pat Foster, Anna Freitas and my husband, John, for coordinating our shuttle drivers and making sure that guests did not drive up to the garden.
• Dianne Tinnes  and her husband, Tim for taking over the placement and pick up of the directional signs
• Connie Cady for putting the directional signs together
• Every volunteer for remembering her name tag

If you have any suggestions, please let me know because I agreed to be the Garden Tour chair again next year and I’ll need all of your help again next May 12 and 13, 2017!! Or if you know of any gardens that we should be seeing as potential ones for our 2017 tour, please contact me.