Stonington — Last summer members of the Stonington Garden Club selection committee began strolling through the borough to get a feel for the various privately owned gardens in the village.

They then whittled down a list of candidates to the 10 that eventually were selected to be featured Friday and Saturday in the nonprofit organization’s popular “Gardens By the Sea” walking tour, which has been held once every three years for the past four decades.

The list of the 10 gardens will be kept secret until Friday morning, when the first ticket holders arrive and are handed a program that identifies the location of each garden, its plantings and other information about them.

The tour, which typically attracts up to 3,000 visitors, is the club’s sole fundraiser and funds its many activities that range from providing environmental education programs for all the town’s third-graders and maintaining the Stonington Community Center’s Children’s Garden to distributing hundreds of holiday floral arrangements to local nursing homes and planting thousands of daffodils along North Main Street. This year’s proceeds also will help fund the hiring of an environmental consultant for the upcoming Mystic River Boathouse park project.

During an interview Tuesday afternoon on a porch overlooking one of the gardens being featured this weekend, event Co-Chairwomen Allegra Griffiths, Caroline Muller and Laurie Paige said the gardens range from small to large, on the water and inland, manicured and natural. Some are in the sun, others shaded. Some are maintained by master gardeners, such as the one they were looking at Tuesday, and others by hobbyists. Some are professionally designed, others not. Some even have pools integrated into their design.

“The one overriding thing is that all of the homeowners take pride in their gardens and they want to participate in the tour,” Paige said.

The garden the three women were visiting Tuesday afternoon is meticulously manicured, with each plant identified, brick walkways and trimmed grass and hedges.

The woman who owns the home, and who is a master gardener, said people walking by often peer through the hedges to catch a glimpse of the garden. She is not being identified because the committee wants to keep the location a secret until Friday.

“I always invite them in. I don’t spend 20 hours a week working on this without letting people see it,” she said.

She said she has been gardening since childhood, when her mother would take her to a nursery and she would pick out flowers and plant them in their yard.

She said she and her husband, who have owned the home for 14 years, completely renovated the garden nine years ago. She chose all the plants and planted them herself.

“It’s what I do instead of playing golf,” she said.

The tour is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days, rain or shine. Tickets are $40 and can also be purchased the day of the tour; tickets are good for both days. Entrance to the marketplace will not require a ticket. Free parking is available.

Information and tickets are available at stoningtongardenclub.org or by calling (860) 531-TOUR or emailing stoningtongardentour@gmail.com.

A new feature this year is called “Artists in the Garden!” in which visitors will see local, plein air artists painting in select gardens. The tented marketplace located on Wadawanuck Square will have a variety of vendors selling garden accessories, plants, crafts, clothing and jewelry, along with home decorating and gift items.

The Celebrity Lecture and Luncheon on Friday, featuring nationally renowned floral designers Kathy Rainer and Tricky Wolfes at the Stonington Harbor Yacht Club, is sold out.

j.wojtas@theday.com

If you go

What: "Gardens By the Sea" walking tour and marketplace

Where: Stonington Borough

When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday, rain or shine

How much: Tickets are $40 each and are good for both days

Information and tickets are available at stoningtongardenclub.org, by calling (860) 531-TOUR or emailing stoningtongardentour@gmail.com.