Flower Power

By: Katrina Segers, staff writer

Mark Coffey/Sun Photo. In the shade: Overland Park resident Frank Livingston, a Johnson County Extension master gardener, offers his garden for viewing during the annual garden tour this weekend.

The Johnson County Master Gardeners biennial garden tour takes place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday at six area gardens.

Every two years the public can tour select gardens that are designed, planted and maintained by area master gardeners.

“What’s unique about our garden tour is we only use Master Gardener gardens. These are tours of real gardens that gardeners garden in,” Dennis L. Patton, Johnson County horticulture extension agent, said. “What they are trying to teach is the you-can-do-it-too approach.”

The tours offer tips, handouts, ideas and a variety of gardens to learn from, he said.

“We’ve got a person on our tour that’s just nuts about butterflies, so her whole landscape is planted so it benefits butterflies,” Patton said. “We have another person that is on small acreage. We have this one garden and the gardener is just a riot. He has some hidden treasures, little things stuck all over his garden. He had a tree damaged by the ice storm and most people cut them down. He carved a face in it and taught the branches to grow up like hair. One is very pristine. Everything is very precise.

“They’re all wonderful.”

Master gardeners will be on hand to answer questions while the public enjoys the “eye candy,” Patton said.

“Gardeners love to talk and share and that’s really what the tour is about, sharing and getting ideas and seeing what other people do,” he said.

Beverly Francella, 64, hopes she can encourage visitors to step out into the garden and learn to plant on a budget.

She said she purchased her home five years ago and developed a five-year plan for the garden.

“I did it all on my hands and knees. I scrapped off the grass with a shovel and planted it a little at a time,” Francella said. “Some of the beds have expanded three different times. I started everything with small plants. All five-gallon trees and most of the plants were in one-gallon containers.

“I try to make it what I call creating a vignette. Rather than just having pretty flowers that are flowering for a short period of time and then when they are done it’s all over with, I try to have it so that there’s trees, shrubs, annuals, perennials, so that in every corner of the garden there is something attractive to look at all times of the year.”

Francella, Overland Park, said her garden formed a little at a time, expanding each year. To help keep her budget down, she said she purchases damaged or unlabeled plants at a discount from big-box home improvement stores and nurseries.

The 15-year master gardener said her garden is her paradise. She said she has planted items to attract wildlife, which she likes to watch.

“If I go to the nursery, it’s not necessarily with a list of specific plants I want. I think it’s the feel of the garden is the most important thing. And when I’m thinking about what to do I think about the feeling I want to evoke,” Francella said.

Frank Livingston, 60, uses his shaded garden to connect with his grandchildren and neighbors.

Frank and his wife, Brenda, 60, have lived in Overland Park for 23 years. When Frank retired five years ago he started his five-year plan to complete a backyard oasis.

Visitors to the Livingston’s home will find a walkway of stepping stones Frank made leading to a shaded backyard.

Brenda said the walkway took two days to design, but she hopes the paths in their garden will inspire others to take down fences because there are no boundaries between their yard and those of the neighbors.

The walkway, coupled with the handmade fountains, is what Frank said he is most proud of.

“I’ve gone on a lot of tours and one of my objectives was to be on a big tour,” he said. “You’re kind of showing off your accomplishments. I was very excited and honored that my garden was chosen.”

“He loves to show this garden off,” Brenda said.

Frank said the pressure has been on to have the garden ready in time for the tour.

“I clean up in the spring. I let the leaves fall and leave them lay in the backyard until spring. They act as mulch,” he said. “It’ll take me three days to clean up. This year with the garden team it took me three hours.”

Each garden on the tour is given a team of volunteers who help prepare the gardens and are present at the tour to answer questions.

Frank and Francella have both assisted on previous tours and enjoyed educating the public and forming friendships with other master gardeners.

“The idea is to take what you have and make it as nice as possible. The thing is a lot of times in many years past garden tours would be in Mission Hills or Ward Parkway at these big, beautiful gardens that people pay to have somebody to come in and design and plant and maintain it,” Francella said. “The gardens on this tour are regular folk’s gardens. People who have done it themselves because they love to play in the dirt.”

Patton said people may not consider themselves gardeners, but deal with landscape in some way.

“Whether a shrub dies out front and you have to figure out what to replace it with, or how to trim that overgrown evergreen. They can come get their questions answered, see what other people do, how things grow, what they look like,” he said. “And I think, just for the casual observer it’s just an escape from your reality into someone else’s.”

Proceeds benefit the master gardener organizations, he said, and when people purchase their tickets they receive a map and go at their own pace.

“We encourage people to bring their cameras, wear comfortable clothes and shoes and enjoy,” Patton said.

Tickets can be purchased at the Johnson County Extension Office in Olathe and Hen House Markets. For more information, call 715-7000.

Contact Katrina Segers at 385-6011 or katrinasegers@sunpublications.com.