If your property has full shade, full sun, erosion problems or frustrating slopes, you may find a kindred gardening spirit at Cobb County’s Through the Garden Gate Tour. The 13th annual tour, set for May 9, will feature six properties: four private gardens, the Ford Elementary garden and Green Meadows Preserve, a community garden.
As in previous years, the gardeners on the tour are focused on sharing solutions and a peek at their unique plants with visitors.
Gardener Judy Hartley had to tackle shade and sloping acreage on her 2-acre Smyrna property when she moved in over 20 years ago. Her garden features ferns, shade-loving natives, low-maintenance hosta, hellebore and heuchera, and variegated foliage, some of which are from Chattahoochee Nature Center and McFarlane Nature Park. Hartley chatted about her garden, which also features a waterfall, fire pit and pond.
Q: What do you love about your outdoor space?
A: Over 25 years I've found what works. That is the reason I agreed to be on the tour after all these years. My garden will help you learn what not to do because I've learned (through) so many mistakes, moved so many plants and even given so many plants away. It's a really educational garden.
Q: How has your garden evolved?
A: It grew and doubled in size in 2008 when my second child went away to college. I told my husband, "I need something." I wanted to have a garden path through the woods. It's very natural. It's meandering. It's taken five, six, seven years to really get it, because that's a lot of work.
Q: What is the path material?
A: It's bark from different trees that I've had to take out. We've just mulched them. I had to take out a 40-foot tall magnolia finally because it had taken over the whole backyard.
Q: When did you put in the waterfall?
A: We were going to put in a retaining wall and fire pit down by the little pond. P.O.P.S. Landscaping (based in Marietta) came out about 15 years go. When he (owner David Gatti), walked in, he said, "You've got to put a waterfall right here." It just looks so natural. That changed our life. We began to live outside more.
Q: What type of furniture do you use?
A: I have collected some secondhand teak. I like that because you don't mind it getting weathered. I don't cover up furniture because sometimes a January sunny day is a time you want to go out and sit. I have a lot of those big double chairs that people can sit in and take naps in the spring and summer outside.
If You Go
What: Cobb County Master Gardeners Annual Plant Sale and Garden Fair, and Through the Garden Gate Tour
When: Plant sale and garden fair, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., April 24-25; garden tour, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., May 9
Where: Plant sale and garden fair, Jim Miller Park, 2225 Callaway Road SW, Marietta 30008; garden tour, various locations
Cost: Free for plant sale and garden fair; $15 in advance; $20 on day of garden tour.
Info: 770-528-4070, cobbmastergardeners.com
See a photo gallery of Judy Hartley's garden.
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