Gardens provide scene for any occasion
Planning an excursion or event? The Spring Hill site offers views from the desert to a shady "secret garden."
By BETH N. GRAY
Published July 6, 2004
SPRING HILL - It wasn't just any garden wedding. Kenneth Nadeau, 44, and Barbara Vaughan, 43, became the first to be married at the Nature Coast Botanical Gardens along Parker Avenue.
The Spring Hill couple exchanged vows and gold rings Sunday in a newly installed cedar gazebo; the bride had decorated the entrance with two intertwined rings of golden blooming marigolds.
The gazebo was a gift to the gardens from Nadeau's mother, Gloria Nadeau, in memory of her husband, George, who died April 2 at age 70.
When Gloria Nadeau served in various offices with the Spring Hill Garden Club, George was a staunch supporter and helper, she said. She wanted a memorial to him.
More memories were rekindled with Sunday's nuptials. George and Gloria had been married July 4 and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last year.
Kenneth Nadeau wore the same style of tuxedo as had his father on that Independence Day in 1953 in Fairfield, Conn.: white jacket and black trousers, Gloria Nadeau said.
The wedding party and guests strolled around the Botanical Gardens' seven garden venues, including a recently completed desertscape and a shady "secret garden," which volunteers were scrambling to finish last week.
The desertscape, begun in April, is a site featuring aloes, crown of thorns, Kalanchoe, prickly pear, flowering lantana, bear grass yucca and other cacti set among pebbled paths and a blue-rock route depicting a dry riverbed. A $4,800 Southwest Florida Water Management District grant paid for the garden, which seeks to promote irrigation-free landscaping, said master gardener Sue Walsh, manager of the Botanical Gardens since May.
"You have to look at (the desertscape) with an eye to growth," she said.
Surrounding the garden are 2-foot silverthorns that will grow to 7 or 8 feet and enclose the site with the exception of an arch of silverthorns over the entrance, Walsh said. Ultimately, the garden will be a sun-blazed patch of succulents and cacti in a shrub-tree enclosure.
Almost adjacent to the desertscape, Jim and Jeanne Erickson and their daughter, Kathy Erickson, were dirty with digging in shrubs as an outer border for the "secret garden," originally labeled a shade and woodland garden, under cool cover of live oaks and drapes of Spanish moss.
At the far west end of the botanical gardens' 31/2 acres, visitors sometimes missed it.
"It was in the back, a secret," said Spring Hill Garden Club publicist Shirley Jacques.
"It's not a secret anymore," said a grubby but smiling Kathy Erickson, who was toting shrubs to her parents as they dug and heeled them in. She first learned her horticulture skills in high school FFA as she followed her Spring Hill parents' avocation.
A grant from Florida Yards & Neighborhoods helped establish the newest garden in progress, but the Ericksons have given their time, expertise and self-raised plants and solicited donations from friends to make it a reality.
Jim and Jeanne Erickson are responsible for beautification of the waterfall entrance to Spring Hill from U.S. 19, Jacques said.
In sharp contrast to the desertscape, the woodlands garden is a shadowed, cool sanctuary where flourish bromeliads, ferns, African iris, calendulas, coleus and more, including some in pots hanging from the overhead oaks.
As the gardens have grown in the nearly three years since they were started, so has the need for money and material to fence in the property, Walsh said. Four-wheelers have run through the site and caused some damage.
"We really need to close it off," Walsh said.
The master plan for the Botanical Gardens envisions 15 themed gardens. Walsh said next on the agenda is a planned wedding garden surrounding an Oriental tea pagoda, not far from the gazebo where the Nadeau-Vaughan wedding was held.
Both venues will be rented out for special occasions and club meetings. Rental fees have not yet been set. But proceeds will pay for development of more gardens and maintenance of those already established.
Access to the gardens is free, open from dawn to dusk. While the site is a relaxing, beautiful venue, Walsh said it is also educational, "to show people how to garden in Florida."
The Spring Hill Garden Club continues to seek more volunteers to add to a reliable corps of about a dozen who turn out 9:30 a.m. to noon Wednesdays.
"We work hard," Jacques said. "We're dirty and sweaty, but we can't wait till next Wednesday."
Volunteers also are welcome at the garden club's adjacent sales nursery from 9 a.m. to noon Mondays and Saturdays.
Financial donations may be made to the Botanical Gardens, P.O. Box 3504, Spring Hill, FL 34606.