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Join the green party Sunday

See five distinctive yards, including the shaded, charming outdoor space of lawyers in love, on the Rose Circle Garden Tour.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published April 8, 2005

BALLAST POINT - On an oak-shaded double lot not far from Tampa Bay, Larry and Ruth Kinsolving tend a garden that's both consciously Florida and a little bit Charleston.

It's also balm for the soul.

"We have highly pressurized jobs and wanted to create a sanctuary where we could get away from the hubbub of work and enjoy the greenery and quiet," Larry says.

Real estate lawyers with a shared passion for growing things, they fell in love in midlife and married on the deck of their art- and book-filled house beneath a 200-year-old live oak they christened Olaf.

A judge who lives next door performed the sunrise ceremony on New Year's Day 1997. The couple exchanged vows overlooking a scrappy but lush yard without vision.

Since then, they've transformed the landscape into a naturalist's paradise with a sprinkling of magic at every turn: black bamboo, a peach tree and a limequat - a cross between key lime and kumquat.

"We wanted it to be reasonably low maintenance," says Ruth, 58, a fifth-generation Floridian who grew up in Marianna and spent summers at her grandmother's beach house in the Panhandle. Influenced by the gardening aesthetic of north Florida and the Southern gardener's bible, Mrs. Whaley's Charleston Garden, Ruth incorporated a traditional fountain and a sprinkling of surprises along a curving brick path: a clutch of exotic ferns, a burst of flowers, the scent of orange blossoms.

The Kinsolving garden, one of five featured on Sunday's Rose Circle Garden Tour, meanders over two small lots, grows mostly in shade, yet pulses with the rhythm of gentle color.

"I love growing flowers and vegetables," explains Larry, 64, who was raised on a farm in northern Idaho. "But to grow vegetables down here you really have to be an expert. Flowers need sun, and this garden offered less than most. So we turned to the beauty of shade plants: ferns, bromeliads. Those kinds of things are just wonderful."

The tour, which costs $15 and includes homemade tea sandwiches, cookies, punch and live music in Fred Ball Park, runs from noon to 5 p.m. It's the annual fundraiser for a garden club known for beautifying Fred Ball Park, a historic jewel of public land along Bayshore Boulevard.

The tour is known for unlocking the gates to some of the most tucked-away gardens in the city.

It has also gained a reputation for the spread of homemade, ladylike delicacies, so much so that the 60-member club published a small cookbook this year filled with members' handwritten recipes for pecan gingersnaps, lemon tea bread, and egg and watercress sandwiches. Rose Garden Circle members will sell the cookbook for $5 the day of the tour.

"It's a gracious way to raise money to get a lot of the hard work done at the park, from brick walkways to swings to trash containers," Clare Robbins says. The event, now in its 13th year, started out as a small fundraiser exclusively for club members.

"It's a wonderful opportunity to view a number of gardens and be inspired and motivated by the work the homeowners have put into their spaces," Robbins says.

Billed "The Earthly Paradise: A Private Viewing of the Enchanting Gardens of South Tampa," this year's tour includes a look into five very different outdoor spaces.

One, a small, terraced city garden, capitalizes on views of environmental sculpture, bay and skyline, as well as a black granite fountain that incorporates glass globes created by local artist Duncan McClelland.

Another, nestled behind the oldest home in Hyde Park, features a pool house and an arbor swaged in coral bougainvillea. A third enhances the New Orleans style architecture of the owner's home.

Unlike house tours, garden tours focus solely on exterior delights, including antique benches, lush plantings, topiaries and exotic fruits. It's an irony appreciated by the gardeners, many of whom have gorgeous homes as well.

After purchasing their four-bedroom, 31/2-bath house in 1996, the Kinsolvings made it very much their own by remodeling the kitchen and expanding and screening part of the deck. They filled the house with family antiques, Persian rugs, art from USF's Graphic Studio, and enough cookbooks and books on Florida to keep them reading for years.

On the deck, Ruth, who loves to cook and entertain, added a cypress breakfast table from her grandmother's old beach cottage in the Panhandle.

It sits just under the oak tree where they were married.

Another deck serves as a kitchen garden where the couple grows an assortment of fragrant herbs. Beds of tea roses and orchids, and a bamboo garden invite the visitor to roam and contemplate.

Dog lovers, the Kinsolvings own a lively pair of black standard poodles. The front door mat declares: "Ask not for whom the dog barks, it barks for thee."

Their marriage, Ruth explains, was "a meeting of minds, hearts, goals and values" - so much so that they named many of the tall, sculptural oaks that grace their yard after Celtic queens and Greek goddesses.

Worth noting: The trees create a leafy, framed canopy that makes the view of Florida sky as interesting as the view of the garden. Larry likes to joke that they bought some beautiful trees and the "house happened to come with them."

Says Ruth: "We are kindred souls."

Especially in their garden, beneath the oaks.

The 13th annual Rose Circle Garden Tour will be from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, with a tea party in Fred Ball Park from 2 to 4 p.m. Tickets, $15, are available the day of the tour at the park next to the Tampa Garden Center, 2629 Bayshore Blvd., or in advance at the Garden Party, 2832 S MacDill Ave.

[Last modified April 7, 2005, 08:54:03]