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Annual tour showcases prize gardens
In the children's nursery rhyme about Mary the quite contrary, she made her garden grow with silver bells, cockle shells and pretty maids in a row.
Dave and Teresa Hymer have a more unorthodox method to keep a garden and yard growing. They prefer using things like coffee grounds and compost.
Billy and Carrie Roeder had another approach. They added 20 cubic yards of top soil to their yard before they started on their garden.
Meanwhile, Robert and Ursula Hart decided to make their garden grow one step at a time over the past 20 years.
These Mountain Home couples were among the nine families that opened their gardens and homes to the local public during this year's city garden tour.
Sponsored by the Mountain Home Garden Club and Beta Zeta Civic Club, the yearly gardening event featured an assortment of gardening "how-to's." A display at Esther Totorica's home on East 10th North Street, for example, showcased a children's gardening project. Others showed visitors how to attract hummingbirds to their gardens or set up automatic watering systems for potted plants.
Despite the size or shape of the yards, the garden tour showed people cost-effective ways to create a backyard paradise without breaking their wallets. Some offered additional tips on keeping gardens environmentally friendly.
"I try to stay as green as possible," said Dave Hymer, who moved to Mountain Home with his family four years ago. Wanting to blend elements of traditional Japanese gardens into the overall design -- including a waterfall and koi pond that attracts dozens of species of birds each year -- they wanted to avoid using pesticides in their organic design.
A former landscape designer, Hymer specialized in landscape features such as retaining walls. He took the concept a step further here by reusing sections of old concrete he saved when contractors built his new driveway.
"It's better than dumping it in a landfill," Hymer said regarding the concrete.
He even reused the wood chips in his vegetable gardens and around his plants. That mulch came from recycled Christmas trees, which were ground up and reused for the family's garden. Although they lack the rich color of pretreated wood chips, the mulch remains free of chemicals used in these store-bought brands, he said.
Meanwhile, a compost bin in a secluded corner of the yard remains a key source of nitrogen for Hymer's yard and plants.
"It what makes the yard so green," he said.
Trying to keep a yard and garden thriving in Mountain Home's desert climate proved a challenge for Billy Roeder and his family. He admits it took a bit of trial and error over the past three years to see what worked and, more to the point, what didn't.
His proudest achievement includes the row of honeysuckle along his back fence line. With the flowers' aroma wafting through the air, the plants were his way of connecting with the past. The plants are his way of rekindling childhood memories with the garden itself serving as his outlet to relax following a long day at work.
"I come out here and just forget about work -- at least for a little while," he said.
Like other gardeners featured at last week's garden tour, Roeder isn't afraid to admit that he seeks out bargains when putting his garden together. He takes advantage of end-of-season sales at local stores and occasionally shops at yard sales to find other useful features.
David and Felisa Sorenson also appreciate opportunities to reuse things around their garden on North 10th East Street. They turned an old tree stump into the foundation for a ceramic village accented with petunias. Meanwhile, they pressed a pair of well-worn boots into service as planters for more petunias.
While some gardens show just a couple of years of work, the Hart family showcased what people can do with their property over the course of time. A thick canopy of vegetation around their home on Stonetree Drive transformed the property into their own version of Shangri-La.
Over the years, they've taken different sections of their yard and created areas, each one representing a different theme. As guests walk on the stone pathways beneath the flower-filled archways, they enter an area that often differs greatly from the one they just left.
"We just did a little bit at a time," Robert Hart said.
The couple started on their garden by planting trees around the perimeter of the yard, which provided needed shade from the soaring summer heat.
But that was just a start. They added an outdoor spa and a deck for their barbecue grill. Their first fish pond soon followed along with the first of 13 water fountains. In time, they decided they needed more space to store their belongings. That led to additional construction of a few portable sheds.
But these sheds are anything but common. Each one comes complete with windows, finished interiors and furniture. A personal favorite of the Hart's grandchildren was transformed into a summer cottage and includes an upstairs loft complete with sleeping quarters.
The Harts admit they rarely spend their summers indoors.
More photos available in the Mountain Home News photo gallery