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Beauty & bees highlight garden tour
Beauty and bees took center stage on Saturday as local families opened their homes and yards to visitors during this year's garden tour.
Celebrating its 17th anniversary in Mountain Home, the event featured an assortment of gardening how-tos along with advice that included tips on controlling pests, improving soil conditions and which plants are best suited for southern Idaho's harsh desert climate.
Stan and Sue Lazarowski started work on their garden paradise nearly 35 years ago. Today, it features a variety of fruit trees, flowers and a small garden, all of which draws birds of various sizes and colors to their home throughout the year.
It's a vast difference from how their yard looked when they first bought their home on North 10th East Street.
"It was all horse pasture back then -- the whole thing," Stan Lazarowski said.
Using a rotor tiller, the couple plowed through all that pasture land and turned most of it into a vegetable garden. As their children got older and moved out of the house, the couple cut back on the garden while at the same time adding other features.
The biggest is a pond measuring more than 72 square feet that comes complete with a water fall and fish. In fact, the pond is deep enough that the fish can remain there throughout the winter. However, the couple emphasized that they need to keep the pond's water pump running to keep ice from forming.
Sue's secret to a great yard all comes down to water -- lots of water, she said.
While some people on the tour used actual water for their yard accents, others like Mary Morin and Bob Ebbs took a different approach. Taking a page or two from Japanese-style gardens, they used large river stones to create a pathway to the backyard of their home on Northeast Cinder Loop. Small gravel surrounding the flat rocks creates the illusion of water while a wooden bridge crossing a similar stone stream completes the effect.
Morin and Ebbs were drawn to gardening simply because it not only creates beauty in their yard but provides a sense of serenity and calm.
It's this sense of relaxation that persuaded Penny Hadley and Terry Gleis to turn their yard on Pheasant Court into their own version of the Garden of Eden. But Hadley admits that was no small task when they bought the home 12 years ago.
In fact, about the only thing they had to work with were two trees "and a patch of grass that was kind of green," she said. Today, the backyard includes a variety of trees with vines covering their back fence.
Their desire to keep the yard vibrant and thriving included a few drastic measures. For example, when one of their trees nearly split down the middle a few years back, they were determined to save it.
"That tree provides vital shade, and I didn't want to replace it with a smaller tree," Hadley said.
To put both halves back together, a metal rod was drilled through the damaged limbs with bolts and metal plates keeping everything secure.
Looking back, Hadley admits that one of her favorite memories over the years was discovering a robin's nest and watching the eggs hatch and seeing the fledgling birds leave the nest.
"I enjoy watching things grow," she said. "I love a beautiful flower, and it's great therapy to me."
While most homes on the tour focused heavily on flowers and gardening features, Liberty Trausch showcased a more unusual hobby as people visited her place on Trailridge Court. It occupies a seemingly plain, white wooden box in one corner of her yard.
As Trausch lifted the lid off the box, her hobby as a beekeeper became clearly evident. Hundreds of honey bees had gathered around the trays that contained sugar water, which they currently use as their main source of food.
For Trausch, the hive was her way of continuing a family tradition.
"I remember doing this with my dad," she said. "I wanted my son to have the same memories."
Trausch has been a "bee mom" for just two months. While she received the hive and bee-keeping equipment from her father, the actual bees came from a source in Twin Falls.
Once the hive is more established, she expects the bees to produce 75 pounds of raw honey over the winter. For now, she's content to allowing the hive to hold on to what they've produced to date.
While she has a warning sign alerting people to the hive's presence, there's a simple trick to avoiding being stung -- simply avoid the natural urge to swing or swat at the bees, Trausch said.
"I've never been stung yet," she added.
Bees and other pollinating species were the focus of a separate display set up at the People's Garden in South Haskett Street. An effort launched by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2010, hundreds of volunteer hours went into producing this garden for use as a hands-on teaching tool.
While honey bees are perhaps best known for pollinating plants, they are not alone, said Jessica Wells, a representative with the USDA office in Mountain Home. Others known for their ability to pollinate plants include moths and butterflies. Even bats prefer to pollinate plants, although people tend to forget about them, Wells said.
However, it's the honey bees that have USDA officials concerned. Research tends to indicate that the honey bee population in the United States has started to decline in recent years.
"They are so vital in our agriculture economy," officials said. "These hard-working 'animals' help pollinate over 75 percent of our flowering plants and nearly 75 percent of our crops."
As people stopped at the People's Garden, Wells shared some easy tips to encourage honey bees and other "pollinators" to stay in the local area from spring to fall. Part of the solution involves planting an assortment of flowers, vegetables, trees and shrubs that produce flowers at different times of the growing season versus all at the same time.
"Once the flowers are done, the pollinators will move on to somewhere else," Wells said.
Wells also encouraged people to plant patches of flowering plants around their property, even if it's a small one, to encourage the pollinators to stay here.