by Connie Oswald Stofko With water, fish, sand and a bar, it’s like a vacation resort in the backyard of Jim and Linda Whittaker, 56 Evelyn St., in the Riverside area of Buffalo. The Whittakers shared their gardens Aug. 3 during the Black Rock and Riverside Tour of Gardens, which included the evening Starry Night Garden Tour. This was the final garden walk of the National Garden Festival in 2013. The bar essentials, including a refrigerator and a draft beer…
If you have perennial gardens, your showy flowers may be at their blooming peak. Learn how to arrange flowers from your own garden in this easy-to-follow video. Maggie Wittmer, professional floral designer at Mischler’s Florist and Greenhouses in Williamsville, shows us how to select flowers from the garden and how to arrange them in a pleasing way. If you don’t have flowers to pick, now is the time to plant flowering perennials for next year. Stop in to Mischler’s to…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko During last year’s Garden Walk Buffalo, mounds of impatiens were flowering robustly at 689 West Delavan, Buffalo. But just a few weeks later, the impatiens were dropping their leaves. By September, the impatiens were gone, a victim of downy mildew. This year, Luis Martinez and Jeff Wilson were among the gardeners who had to find different plants to use in shady areas. I visited them during Garden Walk Buffalo, held July 27 and 28. With 376…...
by Connie Oswald Stofko Pam Weinrieb loved her home at 445 Lebrun Rd., Amherst, but she didn’t like how it looked in the front. So for years she concentrated her gardening efforts on the front. When her son decided to get married and wanted the 2011 ceremony in her backyard, she turned her attention to the backyard. The result is a 1.3-acre lot filled with lavish gardens. I visited during the Amherst Garden Walk, held July 20. Above you can…...
A double-tub wringer washer, a bucket for a milking machine and a pan from a salad bar are some of the items that have been found new uses in the garden of Terry and Debbie Calway on Hampton Parkway in Tonawanda. The Calways’ garden was among the more than 50 gardens open to visitors during the Ken-Ton Garden Tour on July 21 and 22. In the photo at left, a huge coffee machine on the Calways’ front porch becomes a…...
When a house or other building is being razed, wonderful flowers, shrubs, vines and bulbs are often destroyed in the process. Elise Fila of Williamsville doesn’t like to see those plants go to waste. She rescues the plants to use in parks as well as in her own garden. I visited Fila during the Williamsville Garden Tour, which was held Saturday, July 20. Watch the video below to get a few tips on how you can get free plants by…...
Fresh flower arrangement lasts for years– it’s made of potted perennials! This arrangement makes a great gift for a gardener. Not only is it gorgeous, the recipient can actually have all of these flowers in his or her garden next year! That’s because these aren’t cut flowers; this is actually an arrangement of potted perennial plants. This idea comes to us from Mark Yadon, vice president of Mischler’s Florist and Greenhouses, 118 South Forest Rd., Williamsville. Last year he gave…...
One project every year has turned a fixer-upper house with no garden into a relaxing getaway at 389 Berryman Dr., Snyder. I visited during the 11th annual Snyder-Cleve Hill Garden View, held Sunday, July 14. When Debbie Hanny moved in 13 years ago, “There was no garden. It was a wasteland.” The project in the first year was to install the fence in the front yard. This past fall, she and her partner Jerry Schultze put in the raised bed…...
“We’re from New York City,” said Shawn King. “It’s all concrete there. When we got here and saw all this land, we just started planting.” She and her husband, Lew-Jean, have lived for 27 years at 166 Lasalle Ave., Buffalo. I visited them on July 13 during the Samuel P. Capen Garden Walk. “We’ve always had a garden,” Shawn said. “The love of gardening was instilled in me by my grandmother.” In the front yard, a neat arrangement of flowers…...
Sandy Barlow of 702 Chilton, Niagara Falls, has a two-pronged approach to her landscape: perennials in the beds and annuals in pots. Pots line the wide front steps leading up to the porch. They’re set on the porch railing, on tables and on the ground. In the front and backyards, she has 44 pots of annuals in all. “I counted them this year and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my Lord!’” Barlow said. “It comes to a bit of an expense. The…...
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