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2018 Home and Garden Tour Will Highlight Blowing Rock Properties on June 30

The tour will take place from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

The 2018 Watauga County Home and Garden Tour on Saturday, June 30, will feature sites in Blowing Rock, including a hundred-year-old and well-preserved vacation property, a recently renovated and updated get-away, a 1,500-sq ft bungalow that became a 3,000-sq ft showplace, an imposing family gathering place that sits on the Eastern Continental Divide, and two abutting gardens that feature some of the finest in native plant material and original garden statuary.

The tour is sponsored by the Watauga County Democratic Party, which started local community home and garden tours in 2007. Previous tours focused on Beaver Dam, Boone, Zionville, Deep Gap, and the Bamboo-Blackberry neighborhood. Tickets for the 2018 Tour are $25 each (and include lunch — see details below).

Among the featured properties: The Robert and Marion Cannon Hayes home, built in 1917 and now in the hands of the second generation of its newest owners. It has been carefully preserved with its original interior mountain vacation design — with large porch overlooking the Johns River Gorge — and exterior cedar shake siding, a venerable Blowing Rock style.

The Mauldin Family Getaway was built in 2006 on the site of the old Farmhouse Restaurant on Main Street. It features a 70-mile view, spacious rooms, and stunning rock work all over the property.

The Ficklen home was remodeled in 2012-13 as an open invitation for family and friends in lower climes to come to Blowing Rock to escape the heat. It features spacious entertainment space and a guest house.

The abutting Webster-Barbour gardens feature extensive native and exotic plant material (including a patch of the very rare and endangered mountain native, Shortia galicifolia) and life-size bronze figurative statues by the late Richard Hallier. On tour day the owners will welcome visitors to “a garden tea.”

Tickets to the June 30th tour are available any Saturday at the Watauga County Farmers Market, at the Appalachian Antique Mall in downtown Boone, by calling 828-264-9955, and on-line from the DemsParty (https://secure.piryx.com/donate/sVJ8qUtA/Watauga-County-Democratic-Party/hgtour2018). Advance tickets are $25. Tickets bought on day of tour will carry a surcharge for lunch. Lunch will be served between 11:30 and 1:30.