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Home and Garden

Gardeners to show five works of living art

By Elizabeth Bettendorf
Published April 13, 2007

NEW SUBURB BEAUTIFUL - Whenever Lisa Taylor works in her garden, she puts a wind-up clock with a face the size of a dinner plate on her back porch.

That's because Taylor loses herself in her green space: planting and digging and planning her highly natural garden that will be featured on Sunday afternoon's Amaryllis Garden Circle's Annual Garden Tour.

"The garden gives you time to think. When you're in the garden, it's quiet," she says. "I always think of it as my time."

Taylor, a regular model for the Home Shopping Network you can catch her modeling the Suzanne Somers and Anthony By Design lines, is a busy mother of three known as much for her hospitality and cooking as she is for her beauty.

Her fried chicken, barbecue, collard greens, corn bread and black-eyed peas earn raves from friends and family, not to mention the stars whose clothing lines she has modeled, including Patti LaBelle.

Her green thumb is in evidence all around the South Tampa home, where she lives with husband, Dr. Tom Taylor, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and local dermatologist, and their three daughters, Alexandria and Michelle, students at Plant High School, and Olivia, 7.

Her favorite colors sprout everywhere and in profusion: hunter green, yellow and cranberry. And she plants a living quilt of everything she loves: sweet potato vine, coleus, croton, aloe vera, ferns, hibiscus, succulents and bright annuals.

The garden winds from front to back, starting with a small, leafy green garden in the front decorated with a statue of a willowy girl carrying water urns: "The neighbors call this the Monet garden," she explains, referring to the painter's well-documented and beautiful gardens at Giverny, France.

Antique brick, installed by the previous owner, lines the walkway to the front door and the front porch, brightened by pots of purple impatiens. The dove-gray late 1980s traditional house with porches upstairs and down fits nicely into the history-rich, tree-canopied neighborhood. The garden works its magic, too, seeming to stream around the house without stopping the eye.

"A yard should flow like a river and paths should be soft and winding," says Taylor, who began gardening as a child in Kirby, Texas, a town 20 minutes from San Antonio.

"I grew up gardening; our back yard was like a little farm," she says.

Visitors to Taylor's garden will walk through a breezeway into a back yard she has planted with small "secret" gardens and where she displays keepsakes and treasures like her collection of birdhouses, gazing balls and small garden signs meant to inspire and uplift.

A meditation garden features English ivy, a cafe table and chairs she carted to Spain and back during their military travels and shells the family has collected over the years on Treasure Island. Mirrors along the garden walls reflect the sun, and roses grow along the side of the house near the garden gate.

Tour visitors will walk through a trellis flanked by hibiscus to Taylor's "red" garden that includes a soothing brick patio, a fishpond stocked with koi she bought as babies for $3 apiece, and plantings of red annuals.

Even at midday, candles burn on the back porch soothing the soul and inviting guests to sit a spell.

"I always have candles, lit candles - from the front door to the back - because they set a calming mood," she says. "Candles really are the light of the world."

The house is set up for entertaining, Taylor's passion. She always keeps her kitchen "dessert table" stocked with muffins and cake, a tradition she has held onto since childhood "because I always want to have something to offer people when they stop by."

Holiday dinners are usually open house and buffet-style (she keeps the buffet warmers set up permanently in the dining room). She has been known to invite all sorts of friends and new friends who may not have a place to go for a holiday.

Angels fill her shelves, and the front hall table - her "meditation" table - stands beneath framed artwork with the words of one of her favorite Psalms: "May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord."

You can't help but like her.

"Her yard is fabulous, her daughters are beautiful and she's a model," raves Jane Hardin, chairman of the Amaryllis Garden Tour.

"She's always out here working and planting new things. And, unlike other people who just plant stuff and that's it, Lisa knows the names of everything that's growing in her garden."

Taylor, who has belonged to the garden circle for two years, volunteered to open the family's garden on this year's tour, aptly called "The Jetton Jog-About."

"It's a privilege," she says.

The five homes on the tour nestled along tree-shaded Jetton Avenue include a Key West-style paradise; a compact garden that incorporates a pool, spa, cat-iron fountain, a covered outdoor kitchen and herb garden; and a 1922 home with a vegetable garden and a back cottage festooned with window boxes.

The tour, sponsored for years by Bayshore Title Insurance Co., is one of the best deals in town.

It's easy to walk from house to house and relax and visit with friends along the way. A $10 ticket buys you a peek into five of Tampa's most beautiful gardens, as well as wine and cheese, lemonade and sweet treats.

Elizabeth Bettendorf can be reached at ebettendorf@hotmail.com.

. if you go

Tour of gardens

From 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday. Buy $10 tickets that day at any one of the five featured homes:

2505 W Jetton Ave.

2526 W Jetton Ave.

2523 W Jetton Ave.

2608 W Jetton Ave.

2615 W Jetton Ave.

[Last modified April 12, 2007, 07:49:49]