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Big garden on a budget shows a lot of creativity
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Published: September 13, 2008
CLEMMONS - Ellen Tommasi wanted me to know that her garden was built on a shoestring budget. When she started back in 1981, the place was all grass. She had traveled all over the country with her husband, Paul, while he was in the Air Force and this was the place to finally settle in and plant a garden.
It is, in many ways, an ideal spot for a garden -- a large yard on a cul de sac backed up by a forested tract that offers both privacy and a backdrop to frame the planting. The yard is long and relatively flat with plenty of space between the houses. But there wasn't a lot of money to spare back in those days, and so the garden's beginnings were meager.
Over time Tommasi assembled a variety of plants through trade at plant swaps and as gifts from other gardeners. When her daughter, Michelle, worked for several years at L.A. Reynolds, Tommasi became the benefactor of several plants headed for a less auspicious fate. Through these methods of gathering plants here and there and the occasional discount-rack purchase, Tommasi assembled a large garden on a shoestring.
With a compost tumbler in the far corner taking care of much of the garden's fertility needs, expenses were reduced to the cost of some bagged mulch in the spring and a few vegetable plants and seeds. Many of the garden's annual plants are started in a homemade greenhouse that occupies a corner above the vegetable garden. The greenhouse also supplies a spot for overwintering tropical plants.
Tommasi ended up with a long ribbon of garden space winding in and out of the shade of a few well-spaced trees. It is outlined entirely with brick laid flat as an edging. This affords a neat definition between the lawn and the cultivated garden that Paul keeps clean with a weed eater.
There are shrubs, arbors and garden art and an abundance of bird feeders and baths that support a very active avian population.
Lots of bee balm
Plant selection has much to do with defining the economy of this garden. Bee balm, a red flowering mint-family plant that is native to the area and attractive to hummingbirds, forms great swaths in the garden. In keeping with the mint-family habits it spreads through underground rhizomes and is easily divided, shared and replanted in other spots.
Black and blue sage does this too, to a lesser extent, and has been used to the same effect. Tommasi also has a soft spot for pineapple sage, whose red flowers rival bee balm in their capacity to attract hummingbirds. She winters this one over in the greenhouse along with Mexican Bush sage, with spikes of fuzzy lavender and white flowers that are late in coming but worth the wait.
Vines are an important part of Tommasi's garden. She has the black-eyed Susan vine climbing the trunk of a tree where it pops up from seed every year. It has sulfur-orange flowers with a dark central eye. The moon vine is a favorite in this garden. Tommasi says she has had little luck saving seed from year to year and so moon-vine seed is one of her rare annual expenditures.
This morning-glory family relative has large, funnel-shaped flowers that unfurl in the late evening and perfume the night with their baby-powder fragrance.
There are perennial vines as well, spring-flowering clematis being another favorite. This year, Tommasi dug a sprout of maypops from the nearby woods and added it to the garden. The complicated flowers of this native passionflower have blue petals topped with a ray of lavender and white filaments making a striking tropical display.
They are not the only plants lending a lush tropical appearance to the garden. Tommasi has both a lemon and a lime that she has started from seed and keeps in large pots where they can be moved to the protection of the greenhouse. She also protects a night-flowering jasmine whose flowers are yellow-green slender tubes and, like the moonflower, have an intense evening fragrance.
Many more low-care, low-cost flowering plants are found in Tommasi's collection of pass-along plants than can be covered in these pages, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention her fig. It was given to her as a small plant by an Italian man at their church. Every year she makes fig jam that people come to the church bazaar specifically to find.
Tommasi says that her garden is her therapy, a sanctuary to let troubles fall away and give her some time by herself. It also illustrates that a little bit of money and a lot of perseverance can reap great rewards in the garden.
■ If you have a gardening question or story idea, write to David Bare in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27101-3159, or send e-mail to his attention to gardening @wsjournal.com.
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