A walk on the green side

This time around, the tour of St. Petersburg's charming Old Northeast neighborhood features the young gardens of do-it-yourselfers - mostly women.

By LENNIE BENNETT
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 27, 2002

[Times photo: Dirk Shadd] Mature traveler’s palms highlight Janyth Righter’s garden, once so overgrown she couldn’t walk through it.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Is something up in the Old Northeast?

Whether by chance or deliberation, almost all of the gardens featured in the annual Garden Stroll depart from the traditional designs expected in this area of charming old homes, small garden plots and enough affluence to do conventional, high-maintenance landscapes.

But these are, with one exception, young gardens, less than 5 years old. Grass is planted sparingly or not at all. Most flourish on one watering a week.

Even more interesting is that seven of the nine private gardens were created by women who also care for them without help.

Janyth Righter's backyard garden could have been the work of an expensive landscaper. It is, instead, entirely the creation of her imagination and hard work.

"It was so overgrown, you could not walk through it," said Righter, who has lived in her two-story 1920s Colonial for about three years. "I did it in stages every week until the whole thing was cleared."

Righter, a vice president with Florida Public Broadcasting, unearthed the bones of her garden -- bedding areas intersected with walkways and punctuated with a spa and pond. She was fortunate that the garden already had mature traveler's palms (related to birds-of-paradise and bananas, not palms), date palms and standardized ligustrums. Beneath and around them, she has planted a variety of perennials and annuals. She loves to experiment and is not afraid to rip out something that doesn't work.

"I moved here from Pennsylvania and lived in condominiums for years," she said. "I didn't know anything about gardening, but I was determined to learn."

Jane Phair's front yard garden is more modest but has the charm of a cottage garden where David Austin rose bushes flourish.

"They remind me of peonies," Phair said, "and you cannot grow peonies here. I planted one rose and was smitten."

More than a dozen share space with hollyhocks and a tomato plant.

"The tomato plant is a 'volunteer,' " she said. "Probably a bird or squirrel dropped the seed."

This mythological maiden disguised as a yard decoration pauses for a quiet moment in the back yard of Frank and Eileen O’Sullivan’s northeast home.

Phair said passersby do not disturb the garden, even to pluck a tomato. "They're yellow, so people don't think they're ripe."

The most established garden on the tour belongs to Alice Eachus, who lives in Granada Terrace in a handsome stucco house. She long ago ripped out the yard behind it and installed decks with seating areas, shady trees and flowers. Part of the garage was transformed into a spa with hand-painted murals. Hers is also the most traditional garden, with mature stands of giant liriope and foundation hedges underplanted with impatiens and begonias.

A mural by Kathy Taylor Zimmerman on the garage wall of Frank and Eileen O'Sullivan's garden is an extravagant surprise in their small backyard. "Every morning, I looked at a yellow wall while I drank my coffee," said O'Sullivan. "I decided I wanted an Everglades scene. Now it's peaceful, sitting on my porch, like the Everglades but without the bugs."

The couple moved to St. Petersburg after he retired from the Public Health Service, which required them to move a lot. Their yard was so overgrown "no light got in at all," said Mrs. O'Sullivan. "It was spooky."

Today, it is newly planted with drought-tolerant perennials such as Indian hawthorne, creeping jasmine, daylilies and agapanthus that survive without an irrigation system. In two 55-gallon containers, O'Sullivan collects rainwater, which he uses during scarce rainfall.

Tim and Barbara Spofford, like the O'Sullivans, have a new yard "with no grass and no annuals," said Tim Spofford, a copy editor with the St. Petersburg Times. Unlike other gardeners on the tour who talked of wild, overgrown yards, the Spaffords started with "virtually nothing," he said. "It was basically a sand lot."

They hired a landscape contractor to install irrigation, lay down topsoil and plant it with tropical plants that in two years or less will develop into a lush landscape. One touch of Old Florida rarely seen anymore is a crushed shell path.

"It was cheap," Spafford said, "just about $20."

In one corner is a screened gazebo, "bought from the Mennonite community in Georgia," he said. "They delivered it and assembled it, then topped it with the cupola."

Also featured on the Garden Stroll are the residential gardens of Cynthia Press, Kathy Kalmer, Elizabeth Lowes, and Lynn George and Kimber Heddon; the garden at First Presbyterian Church; and Sunken Gardens, which receives part of the proceeds from the tour for scholarships to the summer youth program.

Though the tour is billed as a stroll around Old Northeast, the gardens are spread over the larger North Shore neighborhood. They are clustered in a way that patrons can park and walk to several at a time. It's also a chance to enjoy other nicely landscaped yards not on the tour but visible from the sidewalk.

Preview

The Old Northeast Garden Stroll is a self-guided tour from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on May 4. Tickets are $10 and may be purchased during the week at Olivia's Flowers, 118 Fifth Ave. N; Marketplace Express, 284 Beach Drive NE; Gulf Coast Garden Center, 4355 Haines Road; Dolin's Garden Center, 801 62nd Ave. N; Something Different, 3252 Tyrone Blvd. N; Sunken Gardens, 1825 Fourth St. N, all in St. Petersburg, or Steve's Haircuts, 3906-B S MacDill Ave., Tampa. On the day of the tour, they will be available at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 126 11th Ave. N, St. Petersburg. For information call (727) 822-6982.

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