July 16, 2024 tour
Visit five home gardens plus a docent-led tour of nearby Period Garden Park. This event is jointly sponsored by WI Hardy Plants and MAMGA.
Linda Marx
2710 Oakridge Ave
A friend sent me an article about obscure gardening terms. She felt the term reflected my garden. I can’t argue.
godwottery: an over-the-top garden featuring a jumble of styles laced with kitsch.
Originated with a popular Victorian poem by Thomas Brown entitled "My Garden", the first line of which went, "A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!" Wot means "knows," and wits soon coined the term godwottery for the affected use of archaisms in language and the equally exaggerated kitschiness in gardens.
My 40 x100’ lot is packed. The front yard is shaded with 8 trees including two oaks, a Persian Parrotia, a bristlecone pine and a towering purple fountain weeping beech all underplanted with a variety of shade perennials. I’m fortunate to own the property immediately to the west and I extend my gardening obsession into that yard. The side yard is filled with even more shrubs and trees interspersed with the aforementioned kitsch. Lining the driveway are multiple containers of Japanese maples, miniature ginkgos, dwarf and miniature conifers, elephant ears as well as annuals.
The back yard is dominated by an ancient cottonwood which provides its own challenges. A newly planted golden Katsura will hopefully provide the same neighbor screening the recently deceased black walnut once provided. Rear yard plantings reflect the slightly more available sunlight. I attribute any and all plant failures (rightly or wrongly) to jumping worms. The decks are lined with pots mostly filled with annuals. Too much? Godwottery? You tell me.
Bob Klebba and David Waugh
Mendota Lake House Inn
704 E Gorham St
We have been gardening for 10 years on this 1/3-acre, Fourth Lake Ridge site. Because of our sandy loam, we can’t grow an Astilbe to save our lives, but Fritillaries, species tulips and other plants requiring excellent drainage perennialize very well.
We have been growing a lot of lesser-known natives and exotics from seed and integrating them into the garden. Some are great surprises and others prove why they’re lesser known.
In spite of gardening downtown, our northwest exposure on Lake Mendota puts most of the garden in crazy windiness. The front garden has a south-facing, hot and sunny perennial border and an east-facing border with some shade and poor soil. The front walks are sheltered from the wind and arranged with an exuberance of annuals and potted tropicals that change every year.
We will be starting a massive 7-month-long renovation project in October involving a complete redo of the landscaping with a paved walkway and retaining walls between the house and Lincoln School. Thus, many plants are being moved out of this area for safekeeping elsewhere. In the back, we will also be removing the parking lot, lowering the grade, and creating a back garden facing the lake.
Nancy and Fred Risser
306 N Blair Street
We have been gardening here for about 15 years. In the beginning, we sold to a local developer a piece of property that he needed to complete a real estate deal. In exchange, he let us develop a 3000 square-foot parking lot into a garden space that we worked out with a master plan with Steve Lesch of Landscape Designs. The next step was to tear down a cement garage and scrape off the degraded concrete surface of the parking lot. Topsoil was brought in and the hardscape defined by a berm, granite paths, boulders, and a stone Japanese pagoda. Finally, we added a shed and a brick patio. The challenge of creating a new and beautiful environment out of what was an ugly urban space inspired both of us.
Our Secret Garden is designed so that the bushes, trees, and vines add to the effect of a hidden flowering oasis in the heart of the Madison Isthmus.
Period Garden Park
110 E Gorham St.
Taylor Blair, volunteer
Period Garden Park is a small City of Madison park founded through the tenacious activism of isthmus residents in the mid-1970s. Since its dedication in 1977, it has been maintained by local volunteers and funded through donations. The park is designed to resemble the type of garden that the Mansion Hill neighborhood once enjoyed. The combination of grassy areas and large planted beds occurred frequently in early Madison domestic gardens. Curvilinear forms, brick walkways, carved sandstone step decorations and iron fencing were also familiar elements. Starting in 2007 Joe Bonardi transformed the park, which was not well-maintained at the time, into the beautiful garden it is today. He passed away last summer and our dedicated group of volunteers have carried on work in his memory.
Gary Tipler
807 Jenifer Street
First begun in August, 1997, the garden has evolved to include a variety of colorful and unusual deciduous and evergreen trees, shrubs, groundcovers, horticultural and native perennials, and a small fish pond -- all in a tiny lot. The crown jewel is the weeping elm, grown from a graft by Green Bay-area arborist Lawrence Krause in 1980. He found the parent plant, a mounded shrub, growing alongside the road in Arkansas.
Diane Marx
2309 Willard Ave
My garden is two lots wide. Owning the rental property next door provides another several beds and the gardens seamlessly blend into each other.
The loss of a strategically located heavy maple dramatically changed my garden abilities. Sun! Light! It’s now been 5 years since the maple and huge box elder came down and shrubs and perennials are no longer leggy and reaching for light, having filled in nicely. The 20 year old Dawn Redwood has left its perpetual scrawny 5 foot size and now shows every promise of obtaining its full 60 foot size (except maybe not in my lifetime). The Japanese maple has never looked more beautiful. The beds are redesigned to take advantage of light. The 3 season porch affords great views of the gardens at the end of the day.
Neighborhood folklore has it that the path from my front yard to my back yard is marble from our State Capitol that burned in 1904.