Thousands of people flock to the Kitsap County Fairgrounds for the annual fair, and probably hundreds attend various meetings and events there over the course of a year. It’s a safe bet that far fewer than that number know about a small peaceful garden just across the road from the fairgrounds.

The Anna Smith Children’s Garden is located on Tracyton Boulevard, across from Fairgrounds Road. A short walk through a buffer of trees which shields the garden from the busy road reveals a tranquil paradise, with a lazy pond shaded by a large weeping willow on a lush lawn, park benches for relaxing, and a colorful, educational children’s garden.

The location is a Master Gardeners’ demonstration garden, and boasts a wide range of flowers and vegetables. The immaculate beds are a testament to the tender loving care lavished on the garden by this dedicated group of gardeners.

An arbor covered with a climbing, delicate pink rose leads to a crazy quilt of beds, with tidy footpaths of bark in between. The beds all have themes, from the flower-filled Rainbow Bed near the entrance to the lush Butterfly Bed farther in.

A grape arbor, with tiny green grapes, provides a backdrop to the garden, while the heady fragrance of honeysuckle fills the air.

The garden is meant to be educational as well as beautiful, with detailed plant descriptions and posted information on subjects from tips on planting a “Water Wise” garden to keeping pests away without using harmful chemicals.

The Salsa Bed is laid out to provide everything one would need for whipping up a batch of zesty salsa, with cilantro, tomatilloes, tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, sweet peppers and onions. All that’s missing is a tortilla chip plant.

The Butterfly Bed is a colorful collection of plants designed to attract butterflies, a beneficial visitor to any garden. Familiar plants include geraniums, mallow, asters, sunflowers, columbine and oregano.

The Water Wise Bed instructs gardeners to group plants according to their water needs. This saves water and work. While we live in a typically wet climate, dry weather plants such as grasses and succulents can thrive here, too, with proper care and careful placement in the garden.

It may be tempting for small hands to want to pick a strawberry or pull a carrot, but the fruits and vegetables grown at the garden are donated to local food banks. It looks like a bumper crop of vegetables spilling out of beds, with lettuce and greens, an entire bed dedicated to root crops such as beets, turnips, rutabagas and carrots, and other beds with potatoes, corn, tomatoes and more.

The garden is also dotted with what look like colorful birdhouses for miniature birds — the face contains dozens of drilled holes smaller than a pencil. They’re actually homes for mason bees, the valuable members of the gardening team who do the pollinating. Children might also be interesting in the worm bin, containing hundreds of earthworms busily digesting compost into rich humus (not to be confused with hummus).

A group of Master Gardeners can be found at the garden from 9 a.m. to noon every Wednesday, and they hold tours and classes on a regular basis during the growing season.

There is also a short, steep path to the right of the garden that leads to a small beach on Dyes Inlet. With a broken concrete retaining wall taking up most of the shoreline, it’s not much of a destination beach, but the hike up the steep trail will help burn off youthful energy.

The Anna Smith Children’s Garden is located at 7601 Tracyton Blvd., Silverdale. From Silverdale take Bucklin Hill Road to Tracyton Blvd. and park at the fairgrounds. The garden is open dawn to dusk year round.

Another Master Gardener’s community garden can be found at Raab Park in Poulsbo, on Caldart Street. It features a large garden planted and tended by children and a community P-Patch.