The New York Times publishes a list of great home & garden tours that will take place over the summer each spring. This year Garden Walk Buffalo is on the list - in the "North of New York City" portion of the list. We'll take what we can get.

You can visit the New York Times list here. It's a good list. Make sure you visit the slide show. The Buffalo garden below is on the list of great homes and gardens. Photo is by Don Zinteck, of Photographics 2.

Friday, July 26, 5-9 p.m.

This first-time Garden Walk event will begin at the Clement Mansion. Guests will enjoy wine and light refreshments before boarding luxury coaches that will take them on a tour of three exceptional gardens in a lovely Buffalo neighborhoods.

These exclusive gardens are within the footprint of Garden Walk Buffalo but they have never been, nor will they be on the free, self-guided tour that begins this year on Saturday, July 27.

Master Gardeners will be present and musicians from the Community Music School of Buffalo will provide entertainment in the gardens.

Guests will return to the Clement Mansion for a reception of heavy hors d’oeuvres, dessert, and wine served in a signature, keepsake wine glass.

Reservations are limited to 100 guests; $100 per ticket. There is ample free parking at the Clement Mansion (Red Cross Building), 786 Delaware Avenue. Registration will begin at 5:15 p.m. For questions, call (716) 855-1091.

To reserve your seat(s) online today, visit here.

Garden Walk Buffalo, being the largest garden tour in the U.S., is the signature event (and inspiration) for Buffalo's National Garden Festival (NGF). But it is just one of dozens of events that happen during the six weeks of the Festival (June 21- August 4) taking place throughout Erie and Niagara Counties.For a list of events, click on "Read More...."

Garden Walk is looking for volunteers to help out the weekend of the Walk. We're looking to "staff" our three headquarters with enthusiastic supporters of the Walk that can help answer questions for estimated 60,000 visitors (20% come from out-of-town and don't know the area well!), encourage donations, help visitors with their purchases of GW merchandise, and direct visitors to areas of the Walk that they may find of interest.

Visit Buffalo Niagara (VBN) presented an award to Garden Walk Buffalo as the "2011 Tourism Initiative of the Year" at the second annual Beacon Awards, honoring excellence in the Buffalo Niagara travel and tourism industry, with more than 400 tourism professionals in attendance. The award was offered with the following comments from VBN:

"The Beacon Award for Outstanding Tourism Initiative of the Year goes to Garden Walk Buffalo.

In the summer of 1995, a group of volunteers from the Norwood/West Utica Neighborhood Association created the first Buffalo Garden Walk.
 
The main goal was to encourage neighborhood beautification and community pride. What started as a stroll through 29 neighborhood gardens has grown to more than 370 gardens in 2011, making the event the largest of its kind in the country.

This time, it's the Summer 2012 issue of Real Garden magazine, a specialty publication of NYC-based Country Almanac, by Harris Publications.

The gardens featured include:

• The Lancaster Avenue garden of Jim Locke and Annabelle Irey (page 16, High Summer Victorian)
  
• The Putnam Avenue garden of Wayne Gostomsky and Thomas Flanigan (page 38, Cottage Craving)
  
• The Granger Place garden of Carol Siracuse & Tom Palamuso (page 51, Upfront Flourish)
  
• The Lancaster Avenue garden of Leslie & Jim Charlier (page 62, Vine & Dandy)

Backyard Solutions magazine, a nationally distributed landscape & gardening magazine, features two Buffalo gardens with two-page spreads and gardener interviews and another garden to illustrate ways of making your backyard more private.

The featured gardens include:

• The St. James Street garden of Michael Boland
• The Lincoln Parkway carriage house of Laurie Counihan Brown
• The Lancaster Avenue Garden of Leslie & Jim Charlier

Please visit us on our new Facebook page which can be found here. Please click over and "Like" our page.

Features you'll find online will include:

• Photo collections of different features of the Walk - titles like Mirrors in the Garden, and Hellstrips. More collections will be added over time keep inspired for the other 363 days a year.
  
• 43 Great Garden Ideas found on Garden Walk you can do in your own garden
• Discount coupons and offers from our sponsors
• Up-to-the-minute links to what is being said and written, nationally (and internationally!), about Garden Walk Buffalo
• Garden Walk events - like our booths at Plantasia, Elmwood Festival of the Arts, our Spring Beautification Grants & Speaker event and more.
• Interact with other Garden Walk fans
• Find out more about gardens that you may want to visit for this year's Walk, or see those gardens that you can never quite get to!

GW, being a small non-profit, is looking to extend its marketing reach into the social media realm because many GW gardeners and attendees are on Facebook and, well, it costs nothing! And Garden Walk is all about free!

Visit Facebook and "Like" our page and you'll get Garden Walk updates coming directly to you.

On the garden blog. allanbecker.gardenguru, Montreal garden designer, consultant, lecturer and writer Allan Becker says of Buffalo's gardens, "Have you noticed the Buffalo style gardens that have been evolving in western Upstate New York? This type of gardening is considered by some to be an original American contribution to urban landscaping. Although the style pays homage to Romantic English gardens, its unique and distinct local flavor sets it apart from other gardening idioms. Cultivated in a very cold part of the USA, where winters are severe and the growing season is short, its development is just short of a miracle. That so many residents of Buffalo have successfully embraced this style to make it their own is a phenomenon."

And this is only a small portion of what he writes f Buffalo's gardens. To read his full blog post, visit here. Leave him a comment if you've been on the Garden Walk before, or if you have a garden on the Walk!

70 garden bloggers from 23  states and Canada visited Buffalo for a "sneak peek" of Garden Walk Buffalo. There are now 70 gardeners that have fallen for our gardens and gardening community (and art and architecture). Most wish they had something like Buffalo has in their own communities. Organized by Garden Walk president Jim Charlier and Buffalo Spree editor, Elizabeth Licata (both garden bloggers), it may be the first garden tour to ever get a standing ovation. The bloggers have been writing and posting photos about their trip to Buffalo. Jump to the next page to see what they're saying.