35 Years of the Tour that Helped Protect Denman
Thirty-five of tradition. More than 20,000 visitors. An estimated 200 diverse and beautiful properties front doors and garden gates wide open. Over 800 acres protected in perpetuity. These figures hint at the legacy of the Denman Island Home & Garden Tour. But there’s more to the story than numbers. Above all, there’s people—and the land they love
UNCERTAIN BEGINNINGS
Two events happened in 1990 that sowed the seeds for the Denman Island Home & Garden Tour. Or laid the foundation, depending on whether you want a garden or a home metaphor.
The first: A group of Denman Islanders, watching with dismay as the island’s forests and wetlands fell prey to logging and development, decided they had to do something to preserve Denman’s special places. That something was a concerted effort to save a small acreage under threat.
The second: two of those activists, Sandy and Des Kennedy, had taken an extended trip to the UK, Des’ former home. What they loved most of all during their visit were the garden visits offered by the UK National Trust.
Back on Denman, the ad hoc group was in the midst of formalizing into the Denman Conservancy Association (DCA), a registered charity. They needed $25,000 for a downpayment on the land they hoped to protect. They had energy, passion, and worthy goals—but no money.
“How about hosting a tour like the ones we went on in the UK?” asked Sandy. This could raise funds via ticket sales and a food concession. Garden tours, particularly ones featuring homes, were virtually unknown on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. The group decided it was worth a try.
THE tour takes off
Hosts were found, posters made, and articles and photos submitted to newspapers up and down the coast. Homeowners worked from dawn to dusk preparing their homes and gardens. Amid the busyness, two questions preoccupied the organizers: Would people come? And would the weather cooperate?
“Three weeks before the event, we’d scarcely sold a ticket,” wrote Des Kennedy in the Gulf Islands Guardian. “The organizing committee masked its misgivings behind a façade of bullish bonhomie. All would be well. And so it was. The 500 tickets we had printed sold out a week before the tour. Ecstatic, we dashed to a second printing. Success was at hand.”
But the weather appeared less enthusiastic. As tour weekend approached, the skies remained intractably grey.
“Saturday dawned wet and dreary. Our worst nightmare,” wrote Des. He and Sandy were sipping their morning coffee, watching the drizzle and moping, when they saw a troupe of strangers in rain gear enter their yard—two hours early! Seeing these rain-soaked earlybirds gave the first of many indications that we had failed to factor in one vital component: the absolute fanaticism of garden lovers,” wrote Des.
By mid-morning, even with the rain, the island was aswarm. 890 visitors attended that first year—more than the total population of Denman at that time. The tour brought in $12,000—double the amount hoped for. DCA planned a repeat tour and set its sights on a second property.
Next year, 1300 attended, and the number climbed steadily, reaching over 1500 on some tours. Gardening journalists took note—the Globe and Mail once called it “one of Western Canada’s top five horticultural events.” The tour continued annually until the early 2000s and then switched to every second year. It skipped a year during COVID but quickly recovered.
Each tour raises on average $20,000–$30,000, providing much-needed funds to kick-start land purchase campaigns. As of 2026, DCA has helped protect over 800 acres—thanks in no small part to its flagship event.
HANDMADE HOMES AND FUNKY CULTURE
Although there are now many home and garden tours on the BC coast, the Denman event stands out for its rural character and island flavour.
“There’s a homespun quality about the Denman tour that mirrors the heart-hewn quality of many of the tour’s homes—hand-built, hand-planted, and stitched from the hillsides and valleys where they sit,” says 2026 Tour Coordinator Erika Bland.
Beyond raising funds, the tour builds community spirit. “More than 100 volunteers make it happen,” says Erika. “Neighbours pitch in to weed and tidy. Another brigade puts up signage. Artists paint beautiful name tags. Local eateries offer weekend specials. Volunteers greet tour-goers at each home. And someone always offers to host the afterparty, where everyone involved can finally rest and raise a glass to what they’ve accomplished.”
Sometimes Denman Island culture shows up in fun and funky ways. In the early 1990s, one of the tour sites was transformed into an art installation called the Carmen Miranda Institute.
The Carmen Mirandas is a performance group of Denman women (usually a trio) who dress up in towering fruit hats and theatrical outfits, inspired by the iconic 1940s Hollywood star they’re named after. They used to appear regularly at local protests and community events, and eventually decided to bring their glamour, humour, and cheeky satire to the tour.
“Two Mirandas were on duty as uniformed maids. One of the husbands wore leather jodhpurs,” says Maxine Laqwa Matilpi, one of the Mirandas. “I wore a gown reminiscent of Eva Gabor in Green Acres. The carport for the Mirandamobile (a ’78 Buick Regal convertible with a leopard skin paint job) was transformed into an altar.
“I remember two exhausting days with barely a moment to hydrate or eat, and the shock of having busloads of people traipsing through the exhibit and checking out the assemblages. Some visitors were delighted; some were horrified. But the house and garden had never looked so good, and what a fun way to support the important work of the Conservancy!”
re-use, recycle, and be frugal as a denman way of life
Helen Chestnut, a long-time garden journalist with the Victoria Times-Colonist, often writes about the Denman tour, sharing her appreciation for its “whimsy and enchantment.”
Helen’s interest isn’t just professional—an avid gardener, she’s on the lookout for inspiration. When she saw broken crockery artfully arranged between shrubs and perennials at a Denman garden, she replicated this at home and wrote about it in her column.
After seeing a tomato cage in another garden, painted red, set upside down and filled with rocks to stabilize a piece of driftwood in the shape of a long-necked bird, she wrote, “Now, I have ‘designs’ on my collection of wire tomato cages…Perhaps the re-use, recycle, and generally frugal way of life is endemic to Denman Island.”
Indeed. Tour sites over the years have featured water conservation, off-grid living, permaculture, natural building techniques like cob and straw bale, rainwater catchment, composting toilets, and even systems for using household urine as liquid fertilizer.
HOSTING THE TOUR: FRENZY AND DELIGHT
Some properties been integral to the tour’s evolution, especially Des and Sandy Kennedy’s delightful cottage and garden. When the tour began, Des was just becoming established as a writer, broadcaster, and speaker known for his stories about gardens and island life. Their property was often featured on CBC Television and in Des’s writing. Viewers and readers wanted to see this enchanting place in person.
The couple have been on almost every tour since the event’s inception. 2024 was likely their final year.
This marks a transition for the tour. Luckily, organizers are prepared. For decades, they’ve maintained a spreadsheet of potential sites, sometimes spending years courting homeowners. Many potential hosts are waiting for a mythical future when their house and garden are finally perfect, so the tour coordinator’s job includes persuading them that perfection is not the goal.
Even the Kennedy home isn’t perfect, according to Sandy, writing in the Denman Island Flagstone:
“Before every tour, my mother’s gene for meticulous housecleaning rises up and totally takes over my normally laid-back, rational self (Ha!). I find myself suspiciously eying every dust ball, cobweb, and window smear in this little house of ours…
“I agonize and scrub. As the Big Day draws ever closer, I get horror-struck that we are even on the tour at all. Confidence flies out the still uncleaned windows. ‘Our’ little piece of paradise—that normally we are so over-the-top enchanted by, so bedazzled by—starts looking shabby and just not right.
“Once the Big Day actually arrives, though, it becomes a totally joyous experience. My housecleaning gene disappears into the still undeodorized fridge and I take enormous delight in the many happy people so enchanted with the uniqueness and charm of the homes and gardens they have visited.”
Sandy isn’t the only host to get a bit frenzied as tour weekend approaches. Local lore tells of an older gentleman out in his garden with a hairdryer on the Friday evening before the tour, trying to entice his roses to bloom the next day.
The story doesn’t say whether he succeeded, but we can assume that, like Sandy, on tour day he forgot all his worries amid the hubbub and happiness.
THE REWARDS: CELEBRATING THE CULTIVATED AND THE WILD
Sandy recounts how, in the middle of her feverish cleaning marathon, she’d pause to wonder why on earth she signed up for the tour. She never had to search long for her answer: “One does what they can to keep our community vibrant. For decades now, the Home and Garden Tour has raised money to help preserve wild land. That I will always support.”
Today, 25% of Denman’s land is formally protected by DCA and other agencies, well above the provincial average of just under 16%, and many times higher than the 3% figure from the time of the first tour.
No one doubts that DCA has played a huge role in this achievement. Their dogged campaigns, high-profile successes, community education programs, advocacy and political engagement, and of course their famed Home and Garden Tour—all have kept conservation front and centre as a Denman Island priority.
The abundance of conservation lands, in turn, enhances the tour. “On some tour properties, you feel a big hug from the surrounding natural areas DCA and others have worked hard to protect,” says Erika.
The tour has always celebrated both the cultivated and the wild: manicured hedgerows, heritage roses, and hand-crafted architecture set among towering fir and cedar, native honeysuckle and sword fern, and wetlands teeming with life—all encircled by the shimmering ocean and the mountains raising their peaks to the sky.
Perhaps above all, the tour is an exuberant expression of islanders’ love of the place they live—an act of stewardship and conservation, rooted in gratitude for the land and the homes it holds. 🌿
Article by Laura Busheikin, with contributions from Susan-Marie Yoshihara, Juan Barker, Sandy Kennedy, Des Kennedy, and Erika Bland. Originally published in the Denman Island Barnacle, June 4, 2026.
To honour the Home & Garden Tour’s 35th anniversary, The Denman Island Museum is presenting an exhibit on the history of gardening, with a focus on the tour, during the summer of 2026.
