On Saturday, seven gardens around Cape Elizabeth and one in Scarborough were open to visitors of all ages.

The Cape Elizabeth Garden Tour, the primary fundraising event for the Friends of Fort Williams, ran from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with guests walking or driving from local garden to garden.

The money raised will support the long-term effort to restore and sustain Fort Williams Park as a natural landscape, outdoor classroom and recreational area. The fund will be used toward ongoing revitalization of the Children’s Garden, plantings along the Cliff Walk and adding more native plants to Cliffside.

Meet the gardeners who tend to four of the featured gardens, their lawns popping with color.

PHIL OWEN AND TAYLOR MCFARLANE

Winding paths of wood chips meandered around beds of yellow and pink flowers. Butterflies zipped through, too.

Nestled in the front yard is Phil Owen’s masterpiece, a garden modeled on the Children’s Garden in Fort Williams Park. When the family moved into the house five years ago, there was just a lawn and a few rhododendrons. Now, there are 270 different plant species including flowers, native plants and vegetable plants.

“The way my husband has planted it, there’s always something in bloom from early spring to super late fall,” Taylor McFarlane said.

And the inclusion of native plants and pollinators makes it a “pollinator highway” or habitat designed specifically to support bees and butterflies.

There are also about 20 fruit trees on the property, including unusual finds like persimmon and pawpaw. “When I got them, they were like sticks,” Owen said.

“My thought behind this garden is you’re walking along these paths and you can stop and eat a blackberry or maybe pick a crabapple and then you keep going on your walk,” he said.

Along the side of the property, Owen has built a fenced vegetable garden with raised beds. Here, he grows vegetables like asparagus and garlic, and he engages in a “battle for the ages with the chipmunks.” He also incubates native plants to add to the paths, growing them from seeds.

Eventually, Owen plans to extend the paths past the vegetable garden and to the back of the property, near the sauna and patio.

TOM MIKULKA

Instead of a front lawn, Tom Mikulka has a sea of magenta flowers known as phlox.

“There is not one blade of grass that I allow to exist on this property,” he said. “I like flowers a lot more than I like green grass. One thing I tell people is if you want to find my house in the neighborhood, I’m the only guy who doesn’t have a lawn.” He’s been tending to his garden for the past 16 years.

And instead of grass, his backyard has two ponds, each full of lily pads and koi fish. Frog-like tadpoles awkwardly stuck between adolescence and adulthood squirmed about. The larger pond is fed by a babbling waterfall.

“That sound of running water puts me at ease,” Mikulka said.

“I’m a lifelong fly fisherman, so I’m used to fishing out of trout streams,” he said. “That’s the sound you hear all day long, just water flowing over rocks. I knew I wanted something like that.”

And he’s filled his garden with his handiwork. A rusty life-sized crane sculpture dances at the edge of the pond. A blob-like gremlin with snaggled teeth and sharp metal claws leans over the smaller pond.

Mikulka is a sculptor, with a background in wood carving. Since he retired, he got into metalworking, primarily making birds in action poses. He also has a few sculptures of human forms around the garden. He uses mild steel for his sculptures, and he estimates that they should last about 50 years.

When he’s not sculpting, he likes using his hands. He built all the stone walls in the garden, using rock from the bedrock beneath his basement.

“The process is very peaceful,” he said.

DAVID AND NICOLE CONNOR

David Connor gardens at his childhood home. His parents bought the house in 1979, and his mother started a vegetable garden in the back and a small garden in the front.

But when it became Connor’s house in the early 2000s, he expanded the garden. Now, there’s a greenhouse, chicken coop, beehives, vegetable garden and raspberry bushes.

“The wonderful thing about gardening is that it’s cumulative,” Connor said. “Each year, you don’t have to redo everything you’ve done the year before. You can sort of build off of things.”

And Connor likes to build things. He built the structural elements of the garden like the fences, shed, greenhouse and sauna. He spent four years working on the pond. He dug the hole, built the deck, moved the rocks and installed a water pond to circulate water. And he converted the garage into an art studio, displaying his prints of Maine landmarks and scenes.

Connor is a high school art and shop teacher, so with summer off, he pours his energy into things around the lawn.

“At this point, it’s really just about refinement,” he said. “Now, a lot of the heavy lifting is over. Now, I can go and tweak individual elements.”

CAROL AND BASIL BROWN

Sheltered in green, gravel paths and pops of yellow led visitors to multiple spots of respite. A wooden bench on a shaded stone patio. An open air garden house decorated with a rug, framed photos and rocking chairs.

Carol and Basil Brown have been tending to the garden at their home for the past 42 years. When they first moved into the 1932 cottage, “there was nothing here, just grass,” according to Carol Brown.

“Basil used to come out here and mow the lawn, and I said let’s get rid of the lawn,” Carol said.

They’re professionals, the owners of Taming the Wild, a garden design and landscaping company, and they both said that gardening is in their blood. Basil’s mother had a green thumb, as did relatives on Carol’s mother’s side. And their den is full of gardening books.

They’ve done everything themselves, including moving granite steps from the Commercial Street reconstruction in Portland. “That’s how I learned about block and tackle,” Carol said with a laugh.

The couple works out in the garden “all the time,” whether they’re cleaning the garden in spring or planting what they like. In the 1990s, they put in a shed, decorated like a cozy hidey hole.

“I feel like a kid out here,” Carol said. “I feel like I’m playing.”

Their favorite spot is the brick patio with a wooden bench.

“I like to sit down there and see sunsets across the street,” Carol said.

“Especially in the evening time, with a glass of wine, and just soak it up,” Basil added.