The focal points for the home of Greg and Suzanne Sandoz include several seating areas inviting visitors to sit back and relax year around. Various blooming and evergreen clusters in beds and pots feature a collection of gregarious yard art.

South Louisiana residents love to “geaux.” It’s hard to find a weekend without a festival, cook-off or other organized activitiy. Some are fast paced, others more leisurely.

Weather permitting next week, The New Iberia Garden Club will hold its annual Town and Country Tour of Gardens featuring four landscaped homes in and around New Iberia.

Club members volunteer to help with many of the community gardens, including City Park’s Senior Center, Iberia Parish Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and The Blue Star Memorials honoring the military. They even support the Adopt-a-School programs at Daspit Road Elementary, Sugarland Elementary and Epiphany Day School’s butterfly garden as well as the one at the Main Street Library.

Vice president Ruth Boutte said Alma Ebel has been called a one-woman ambassador, taking care of all of the beds along New Iberia’s Main Street.

The annual tour is the club’s only fundraising event of the year. Proceeds pay for plants and supplies to landscape Habitat for Humanity houses, as well as the other community projects where volunteer hours are even more valuable than the cost of maintaining the ambiance sometimes taken for granted.

This year’s homes feature landscaping that maximizes yard art, scenic vistas and native perennials and annuals, favorites of our region. Hardy for a Zone 9 home are the evergreens and palms which do not require intense maintenance during the hot summer months.

Homes for the tour are selected from around the community by members but are usually non-member homes. This year’s tour features the following:

• 2012 Squirrel Run owned by Parker and Carrie Templeton, New Iberia

• 501 Cemetery Road owned by Eric and Stacey Landry, St. Martinville

• 107 Oak Hill owned by Greg and Suzanne Sandoz, New Iberia

• 24 Paradise Woods owned by Kay Thomas, New Iberia

The tour is scheduled from 2 to 4 p.m. April 26 with a raindate of May 3. Donations are accepted at each of the four homes, minimum $5. For more information on The New Iberia Garden Club contact newly elected president, Carolyn Bienvenu at email address bienvenura@bellsouth.net. The club meets monthly from September through May.