LATHRUP VILLAGE — A self-guided home tour in Lathrup Village will allow people to get up close with noteworthy gardens in the city.

The Lathrup Village Nature Group will be holding its tour for the second time from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 14, featuring six homes where the homeowners have put years of work into their gardens.

The tour will begin at City Hall, 27400 Southfield Road. The $15 admission fee gives an attendee a tour brochure and a map to the homes.

Susan Arneson, chair of the Nature Group’s planning committee, described one of the gardens featured on the tour as an “artist garden,” as the homeowner is into welding, metal sculpture and painting.

Other gardens on the tour were built and maintained by landscapers, who have a big collection of interesting and unique plants.

“They have access in the trade, but they also just have that knowledge and interest and have incorporated a lot of interesting plants within their yard,” she said.

Among the homes that Arneson was talking about was the home of Ed Blondin, a longtime Lathrup Village resident who’s been tending to his garen for more than 20 years.

Blondin said he takes pride in the diversity of the plants in his garden.

“The diversity of the plants — they range from the really exotic to the really mundane,” he said. “I try to keep my garden more like a botanical garden than I do as something that just a general homeowner might want. I have a landscape company, so I understand what homeowners want, but mine I do keep as a collection.”

Blondin has participated in other tours where people have come to his home to view his garden, which is something he takes pride in.

“I always say the gardens look best when there’s people in them, enjoying it,” he said. “I get lots of compliments. My husband of 20-something years has been a huge part of it, as has our daughter, who is 30. She’s been a huge part of it. So, it is a collection of plants that spans decades.

“It’s very personal. My garden is very personal to me,” he continued. “So when I invite people in, I’m inviting you into my inner sanctum.”

Arneson said it’s a lot of fun to be able to see the creativity of the homeowners in how they designed their gardens.

“We’ve got an older established neighborhood, so people have good bones that they’re working with,” she said. “It’s not like it’s a brand-new subdivision. I mean, we’ve got a lot of mature vegetation already that people have to work with and work around, and so that makes things feel very lush and full and adds a lot of interest.”

A big pull of the event, said Arneson, is attendees coming to the homes to get ideas for their own gardens. It’s also a chance for people to tour Lathrup Village.

“We have such a pretty neighborhood, a beautiful little pocket neighborhood that people often, I mean, they drive through it and if you don’t get off the freeway or off of Southfield Road, you don’t necessarily see it or know it,” she said. “This is an opportunity to kind of introduce Lathrup to people who may not know the area very well, but also for us as residents to meet each other as far as neighbors and what have you, and it’s just a great opportunity to show off the pretty yards and neighborhoods that we have.”

For more information, email the Nature Group at lvnaturegroupinfo@gmail.com.