The Noe Valley Garden Tour is helping the community. The Tour is a project of the Friends of Noe Valley, your neighborhood association. Members of the Board and the events committee plan the tour, select the gardens, solicit sponsors, arrange for ticket sales, prepare promotion materials and take care of the many other details any major event requires.

Sponsor donations and ticket sales fund the Tour. After the bills of producing the Tour are paid, a donation is made to neighborhood beautification. This year, the beautification beneficiary is the renovated garden at the Noe Valley Library on Jersey Street. In a previous year, Garden Tour funds also went to the Library garden but retaining wall work necessitated a new revamp.

The Garden Tour also needs your help. The Tour cannot happen without the dozens of volunteers who staff the entrances to the gardens. Garden Greeters they’re called.

A Garden Greeter welcomes visitors to the garden, checks for their Tour ticket and sells tickets as needed. Each shift you work earns you a free Tour ticket.  Shifts are 9:30am-12noon, noon-2pm and 2pm-4pm. To volunteer, email us at: gardentour@friendsofnoevalley.com. Be sure to note your preferred time shift, email and phone number. The 2013 Noe Valley Garden Tour takes place Saturday, May 11th.

Another benefit of volunteering is the GTTYP. That’s Garden Tour Thank You Party. All Garden Greeters, sponsors and other volunteers will be invited to a pre-Tour thank you bash at the home of last year’s Noe’s Favorite Garden winners, Jana and Geof King.

Free ticket, free party. How can you not volunteer?