Cassel strolls through her garden daily, using her walker to help her along the wide paths at her own pace. Even though she can no longer bend over to weed or prune, when it comes to gardening, she rarely sits to take a break.

Cassel is the loving owner of a garden and home at 22561 Old Santa Cruz Highway in the Los Gatos mountains. Cassel's gardens are tucked off the main road, only to be flaunted for Cassel's family and friends. Most people don't know her secret garden exists.

But she's getting ready—with the help of a handyman—for visitors who will come from near and far to tour her property as part of the second annual Loma Prieta Community Foundation's spring mountain garden tour and brunch May 8 and 9. Participants will have the opportunity to meander through Cassel's paradise, as well as five other beautiful, blooming mountain gardens.

Cassel's approximately four-acre property is an abundance of colorful flowers and perennials such as the native Douglas iris and Solomon's seal.

"It's like a different world. You come through the gate and here it is," says Cassel, pointing to one of the gardens on the property named after her late husband, John.

The entrance to John's Garden is marked by a wooden, handmade arbor. When the Cassels bought the hillside property in 1991, after moving from a residence just across the street, it was a mess of dead trees and weeds that needed some serious spading and tender care. Today, the quiet and private land boasts purple alyogynes, elevated tree ferns, golden daffodils, longspur columbines, a shade garden lined with a redwood bark floor, vivid orchids, clematis and so many other budding beauties it's hard for Cassel to keep track of them all.

A roofed planthouse, which Cassel calls her "playhouse," allows her to stand while tending to plants on a raised countertop.

"I can spend hours fiddling around out here," she says.

In her cutting garden, zucchinis, melons, tomatoes and fragrant Louisiana irises grow. And where there's a bare patch of dirt, there's also a stake marking what has been buried beneath the soil.

There's history in the soil, too. Cassel's house was once a destination for travelers along the San Jose­Santa Cruz stage line.

"It was a stagecoach stop, and it has been through many changes and many reincarnations. The only thing left is probably the plank floors," says Cassel, referring to the home's original floorboards.

The Mother's Day weekend tour will also showcase the gardens of Ann and Art Fittinghoff, 25507 Soquel­San Jose Road; Sandra and Forrest Hill, 25279 Soquel­San Jose Road; Bill and Patti Hughes, Trail Ridge Drive at 23107 Summit Road; and Joan and Milton Barber, 23111 Summit Road. And the tour will include the Loma Prieta Elementary School garden, 23800 Summit Road, maintained by children, parents and staff to brighten up the school campus.

Hester Creek Farms

The Fittinghoffs' property, known as Hester Creek Farms, was first settled in 1896. Florence and John Wood and their family acquired the land in 1919 and farmed it for more than 50 years. Originally the property was an apple ranch, but it has since evolved under the ownership of the Fittinghoffs, starting in 1966, into a persimmon orchard, Christmas tree farm and floral-cutting garden.

"It feeds your soul," says Ann of the property's spectacular views. "When we first came up here, it was void of anything except the orchards, because that's how [the homeowners] survived."

Until 1952, the original building on the property served as a residence for a teacher responsible for instruction at Hester Creek School, a one-room schoolhouse for mountain children. The one-room schoolhouses that once speckled the high country have since been consolidated into the Loma Prieta Joint Union Elementary School District.

"Things have changed since 1966," Ann says. "The only thing you heard was traffic on Sundays for church. It was very different. It was very rural."

Ann now operates a special-event floral business, custom-designing flower arrangements for weddings from the farm's gardens with old-fashioned flowers like David Austin's English roses. In addition, the property is rented out for special occasions such as weddings.

Bricks and flagstones inlaid on the garden patios were reclaimed by the Fittinghoffs from some of the original homes in the Summit area, many of which were damaged or destroyed by the 1989 earthquake.

"My husband is a demolition contractor," Ann says. "And after the earthquake, the opportunity arose."

Grape stakes from Mount Eden Vineyards in Saratoga have replaced wooden ones, and the decks are composed of fragments from Niles Canyon and the PG&E building in San Francisco. A closer look at the patio reveals shattered plates, a tortilla maker, tractor gears and a wheel rim from Art's 1953 GMC truck, which are of personal significance to the Fittinghoffs.

Some of the specimen trees and rosebushes on the property date back to shortly after the turn of the 20th century. Ann says many of the first plantings have prospered because of the location's microclimate and warm currents from Monterey Bay.

Terrace Hill House

Sandra and Forrest Hill's residence, Terrace Hill House, is a historical home once used as the Terrace Grove Hotel. Every now and then, the Hills still dig up an old bottle or a piece of the past. Once upon a time, board at the hotel with gourmet meals ranged from $7­$12 a week, and the house's deed dates back to 1898. At one point, it was also called "Bonny Blink" or "Blink Bonny" Lodge, a name derived from the expansive views of Santa Cruz, Monterey and the Pacific Ocean.

The Hills have occupied the renovated home, where they raised their children, since 1973. Sandra rents the backyard out for private weddings and events that she also caters with the help of friends. Some of the weddings have been those of young people who have stayed with the Hills as part of Servas International, a cultural-exchange program.

"It's wonderful," Sandra says. "We keep the weddings small, and we've had people come from all over the world. People say they never imagined this was up here."

The property also features a wine and root cellar, chickens, dogs, a vegetable garden, various types of flowers, handcrafted stone walls, and a pottery studio that doubles as a guesthouse where the original hotel once sat.

"I try to keep things growing year-round—peas, summer vegetables," Sandra says. "Living up here, you don't want to run to the store to get your fresh vegetables."

Redwood Hills Gardens

Leave those high heels at home. For a totally indigenous immersion into the mountainous terrain, Joan and Milton Barber's house, known as the Redwood Hills Gardens, is another stop not to be missed on the tour. Members of the Barber family will take visitors on a one-mile, one-hour trek across the property, with an emphasis on completely native plants and the forest setting. This is the most strenuous and steepest walking trail of the tour.

But the new growth and ancient redwood trees, and the effects of early logging before chainsaws existed, the 1906 earthquake, 1985 fire and sudden oak death disease, are sights to behold.

"I can pick out my property from Campbell because of the skyline of the trees," Milton says.

The Barbers bought the property in 1974, and Milton built their home using sound engineering practices. The home's stable design is especially important since there are surface traces of the San Andreas Fault on the property, where in 1906 the two sides of the fault line shifted by four feet.

At an elevation of 1,600 feet, the 21-acre property has been slumping and settling over the last 100 years, Milton says, pointing out tilting trees and root systems that have grown with the hillside slope. Many types of ferns, plus both fallen and massive, looming redwoods and Douglas firs, are interspersed across the property.

The Barbers' acreage includes unique plants like hookers fairy bells, a vineyard and even a great horned owl. Milton said he hopes that visitors on the tour will reconnect with the beauty of nature and remember to respect it.

"From something like this, I hope they'll appreciate the need not to play with firecrackers. Fireworks on the Fourth of July were what caused the 1985 fire," Milton says.

The four-day destructive blaze ravaged close to 14,000 acres and 42 homes in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties—damage still evident on the Barbers' property today.

"How these trees can live through fires like that? I don't know," says Milton, indicating the bases of redwood trees hollowed out by the flames.

Maison du Lac

French for "house of the lake," Maison du Lac is the home of Patti and Bill Hughes. It features nearly 30 acres of spacious property—12 of which are gardens and green lawns, unusual for the mountainous location. There are benches perfect for reading, paths to wander and lakes to explore that will leave visitors feeling like they have stumbled upon a park rather than a backyard.

Patti loves showing visitors her white wisteria, dogwood, spring-blooming jasmine and snowball bush, which comes from her former home in New York. The property is also rented out for weddings and special events. Her husband jokes that every time Patti gets tired, she buys a bench, even though she never sits on them. Patti delights in running her hands along lemon verbena and prostanthera shrubs, pressing their leaves to her nose and then inhaling.

Patti's gardening techniques include mixing plants and flowers that are attractive and tasty to deer, with those that are just the opposite. Fuschia, salvia, rosemary and cerinthe are some of the plants that can be combined to keep away pests in unfenced areas.

"There are over 900 species here, and the deer don't eat any of them," Patti says.

Patti adds that visitors are often doubtful when they hear she's the property owner, wearing grubby jeans, dirty sneakers and a plain vest over a cotton T-shirt. Casual gardening attire and a straw hat are her trademark. She and her husband moved to the residence in 1968, and in 1990 built the gardens, which now include more than 100 different types of trees. There are minor downsides to mountain-style living—Patti attests to going without heat and electricity at times.

Three ponds at Maison du Lac are home to catfish, ducks, turtles, dragonflies, frogs, salamanders and a little, blue "Monet boat," as Patti calls it. The boat was built by the father of one of Patti's former students when she was an administrator at Los Gatos High School.

With the help of former Los Gatos High Principal Ted Simonson and mountain resident Steve Norman, Patti's latest additions include benches surrounding 10 giant redwoods and a deck near the house, as well as a fenced French kitchen garden, which offers flowers and vegetables. There are baby peas just now budding in the all-organic garden and lots of radishes.

"I want to be able to walk out to this garden any time of the year and pick something to eat," Patti says.

Strawberries, onions, beets, oregano, roses, tomatoes, blueberries, spinach and daffodils are just a few of the plantings in this garden-sized supermarket.

"No matter what your problems are, you can go out in the garden and in 15 minutes you've forgotten them," Patti says. "You are just in another world, it's so peaceful."

Marjorie Cassel waters and tends to some of the plants in the greenhouse of her gardens at 22561 Old Santa Cruz Highway in the Los Gatos mountains, where she has lived since 1991.

Milton Barber looks up at some of the largest redwood trees on his property, Redwood Hills Gardens, in the Los Gatos mountains. The trees were damaged by the 1985 fire that swept through Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties.

Donna Hollister (left) and Elizabeth Bueno smell some of the fragrant flowers at Maison du Lac, the garden of Bill and Patti Hughes in the Los Gatos mountains. The two were part of a group that toured the property on April 14.

Peaking out from inside one of the large redwood trees on his property is Milton Barber.

Visitors (from left) Elizabeth Bueno, Michele Brown and Jack Donovan receive a guided tour by Patti Hughes (right) of her garden, Maison du Lac, which is French for 'house of the lake.'

By Lisa Toth

The Loma Prieta Community Foundation, established in 1983, is a nonprofit volunteer organization dedicated to building and supporting a strong sense of community in the Summit area through educational, cultural and recreational opportunities for mountain residents. Proceeds from the May 8­9 garden tour and brunch will benefit the foundation.

Garden tour co-chairwomen Michele Witten, Laurel Dentoni and Sue Pierce are coordinating the event. The gardens will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days.

"This is the glory of the mountains—so close to the valley but so far away," says Dentoni, referring to the lack of pollution and traffic and the sense of tranquility visitors will experience firsthand. "I've always thought it was so amazing that these gardens exist 15 minutes from town."

The tour is primarily self-guided with the assistance of a passport booklet, but garden hosts will be available at the sites to answer questions and, in some cases, lead tours.

Linen-clothed tables set with china will offer a classy, exquisite brunch served from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. both days at the Loma Prieta Community Center, 23800 Summit Road, on the garden terrace. Various artisans will have their wares on display at the center, with a portion of the profits benefiting the foundation. The event is perfect for mothers and their children, families and people of all ages, Witten says.

Tickets for the garden tour are $20 for adults in advance and $25 the days of the event. Children 14 and under are $10 in advance and $12 at the door. The brunch is $10 prepaid for adults, $12 at the door, with children's tickets at $5 in advance and $7 the weekend of the event. Seating for the brunch is limited, but garden-tour tickets are good for both days. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 408.353.8025.