Five Impressive Local Gardeners
July 5th, 2016
For all of the boring, outdated, overgrown and/or bare-bone landscapes that make up the norm, it’s uplifting to see what some motivated people are doing with their yards.
Ann Markley next to her landscaped labyrinth.
A hundred-plus garden-lovers who went on our Lowee’s Group Tours day trips last week got to see the work of five uber-gardeners in Harrisburg’s East Shore suburbs – ones I’ve seen and marveled at before.
I could try to describe each place and tell you about the wonderful designs and cool plants these people are using, but the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words applies here.
Instead, I’ve put together a collection of photos from each of the five places so you can at least do a “virtual tour.” It’s posted under Home-Grown Gardens 2016 at the top of my Photo Galleries section. (Photos from last year’s Home-Grown Gardens 2015 is a little lower on the same list.)
Briefly, here’s what we saw:
* Kristin Livelsberger loves hydrangeas, and she’s been building an acre’s worth of hydrangea gardens (more than 200 of them and counting) in the dappled-light front yard of the West Hanover Twp. home where she and builder/husband Tegan have lived since 1999.
Kristin Livelsberger with one of her white hydrangeas.
Kristin, an art teacher by profession, also is a master at carving out little sitting nooks to make her gardens as useable as they are beautiful.
And her dry-shade conditions are a good display ground for perennials and groundcovers that will grow among the roots of high-limbed pines and hemlocks.
* Ann Markley couldn’t bear to see her parents’ gardening efforts go by the wayside, so she took over the torch after they died. She not only has maintained but improved and expanded 7 acres worth of gardens called Morris Medley.
This special place just off Allentown Boulevard in West Hanover Twp. not only features Ann’s childhood home but also a butterfly house, a large pond, a landscaped labyrinth and lots of colorful, lush plantings. Her own children now help, and she welcomes visitors.
Ann graciously welcomed our groups even though her husband of 57 years, Don, died the week before. She’s finding the garden to be a place of solace and peace, which it has been for many others as well.
David and Jacy in their springtime garden.
* David Wilson and his wife, Jacy, live on a 2-acre mostly shaded property in Lower Paxton Twp.’s Windmere development. A stream runs through it, and both side yards have slopes that are planted.
Using David’s plant knowledge (he’s trained in horticulture and is marketing manager for Garden Splendor Plants) and Jacy’s art background, the couple have put together beautiful vignettes of expertly paired, cutting-edge plants.
The yard is a textbook lesson in how to achieve a four-season landscape.
* Firefighting author and retired Harrisburg firefighter Dave Houseal and his wife, Bonnie Housel, once planned to buy some land in northern Pennsylvania so they’d have a place to get away.
That never happened, but they did turn their own 2/3-acre suburban Palmyra yard into a get-away, featuring patios, waterfalls, trees, gardens, and the crowning glory, a shady stream that dumps into a pond next to a quaint “writer’s cottage” that Dave built out of recycled barn wood.
There’s also a section devoted to Williamsburg-style gardens and others devoted to veggies and blueberries.
Dave Houseal by his stream.
This place is a good example of how an open yard can be turned into a series of outdoor rooms connected by paths and divided by arbor doorways (which Dave also builds).
* Our last stop was to the home of Mike and Jeanine Larkin, who garden on a little more than a 1-acre lot in the Chambers Hill area of Swatara Twp.
Mike does garden design aside from his full-time insurance-company job, but his two main loves (besides Jeanine) are conifers (their yard has plenty of dwarf and unusual specimens) and succulents (those colorful little low-water-users that have become a trendy item lately).
Mike makes his own stone-like hypertufa pots and troughs and displays more than 70 succulent plantings in them throughout the yard.
Mike Larkin with just a few of his hypertufa potted succulents.
Enjoy the Photo Gallery of these places, and be sure to watch for next year’s third annual tour of local gardens. I’m in the midst of putting together five special gardens in the Perry County and Carlisle areas for that one.
Both this year’s and last year’s maiden local tour went over so well that we started with one bus and added a second after the first ones quickly sold out both years. The second buses also sold out, telling me that people apparently like to see others’ private home gardens.
In the meantime, check out the remainder of this year’s garden tours on my Talks and Trips page.