Stopping to smell the flowers
Working with nature
Arlene Marturano

Elephant ears, nature's satellite dish, are one of the many plants in Lois and LT Shannon's yard.

Arlene Marturano is 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

Since moving to their home 17 years ago, LT and Lois Shannon have worked with nature to maintain a serene woodland setting.

LT's experience as a former nursery owner, specializing in woody ornamentals like azaleas, hollies, camellias, and mountain laurel, and an eye for flowers that bring pleasure to humans and wildlife, combined to create a succession of color across the seasons.

Vincas delight in their bright sunny location.

Starting at the back property line, they added native mountain laurel that was salvaged from a construction site in North Carolina.

The privacy fence is 12 feet tall and provides three weeks of bloom in spring. Wild native azaleas grow magnificently tall in the front yard providing a color advance to the mountain laurel.

Some of the wild azaleas were grown from seed by their son.

Two Magnolia grandiflora trees tower over the entire garden displaying white blossoms in summer. The leaves of oaks, sweet gum, and tulip poplar bring bright fall color, and Camellias provide bloom in the winter.

Lois Shannon loves elephant ears, caladiums, hostas, and flowering plants that require little care in the heat. She tends beds containing old roses, lantana, butterfly bush, vinca, and hydrangea.

Shannon's lorepetalum, Lorepetalum c. rubrum, with a tree- like stature of 10 feet grows as an accent plant in full sun. This evergreen member of the witch hazel family has reddish purple and olive green leaves for year round interest, and in spring the plant is covered in pink blossoms.

Another unique and dramatic flowering shrub with bright- red closed flowers is nicknamed Sleepy mallow or Turk's cap, an evergreen that blooms from April to October. The flowers droop, and the petals never open, which gives an appearance of being sleepy.

However, hummingbirds are attracted to the tightly twisted red flowers and probe for nectar. The drought resistant native to the southeastern U.S., Mexico and tropical America is very adaptable to soil types and light conditions.

The spring cold spell affected many gardens in the Midlands and set the growing cycle back two to three weeks. None of the Shannon's pear trees bore fruit this year. The figs are much smaller in size than usual, and the hydrangeas did not flower.

Their garden selections have evolved over time, but from the start LT Shannon researched the soil of the site before planting anything. He sends a soil sample to Clemson University each year to determine pH and get recommendations on lime and minerals needed.

Shannon reads the latest books on plants to find out as much as possible before planting and uses county agents from the Clemson Extension Service to answer questions.

Shannon notes that water is such an important element to the success of a garden and lawn. The Shannons use a well and an automatic watering system to maintain healthy plants.