Stopping to smell the flowers
A summer escape
Arlene Marturano

Arlene Marturano a master gardener, writer, and educator. As an advocate of gardening as a tool for learning, she helped develop the Carolina Children's Garden at the Sandhill Research and Education Center. She is an education consultant with T.E.A.C.H. marturano@yahoo.com

"I spend the winter indoors so I want to spend my summer outdoors in the garden," says June Wykowski. She has breakfast every morning under a white canvas garden tent.

In her garden's infancy in the 1960s, roses and petunias were the only two plants she could manage while raising seven children.

Wykowski never wanted to dig up the center of the yard preferring lawn and open space for her breakfast tent from which she has a 360° panorama of the perennial borders of peonies, daylilies, Easter lilies, roses, coneflower, and heather.

Since there were no neighbors or garden clubs to share in her interest of plants, Wykowski taught herself gardening through books, garden catalogs, visits to botanic gardens, and trial and error.

Container plants surround family cookouts.

One of Wykowski's greatest challenges has been clay soil. By adding peat moss, topsoil, and manure over the years, she has developed a fertile foothold for the flora. Her awareness of the varying energy requirements of trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants and turf, influences placement of plants, water, and fertilizer. Twice a week she spends an hour- and- a- half watering with a hose and applying Miracle- Gro throughout the summer.

June claims her garden has no rhyme or reason except to grow the plants she likes. Her color palatte this summer, purple and lime green, is featured in container arrangements of wine ivy geraniums, verbena, sweet potato vine, coleus, clematis, asters, hosta, petunia, achillea, and the outlaw, purple loose- trife.

About five years ago Wykowski initiated container gardening due to the arthritis in her knees. The raised containers along with a wheeled rolling garden cart, which she sits on, are adaptations to keep her an active gardener.

One very special area in the garden is a shady grotto under a large mulberry tree with hostas planted beneath. The cool serenity of the secluded spot is a refuge for Wykowski and wildlife.

Since the garden is a family place, each spring Wykowski's sons and daughters help her prep the land. The sons do the heavy digging. Then ground covers like ivy and pachysandra are installed. Petunias are planted outside the fence, and the family members wear a

T- shirt with the logo Little

Ricky's Garden Center in honor of the family dog.

"The garden usually starts to grow by early June and by the Fourth of July things are really popping," Wykowski said.