The Jamestown Sun
Carrington Health Center Auxiliary's Yard and Garden Tour only happens once every three years, and this Tuesday, from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m., is the day.
Those who make the short trip up U.S. Highway 281 will have the opportunity to visit three city and two country gardens, where refreshments and entertainment add to the enjoyment of the flowers and shrubs.
Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at any one of the gardens. In town, those are the homes of Michelle and Duane Kliem, 1450 Third St. S., Marlene and Gary Boyer, 262 Fourth Ave. N., and Tami Beckley and Gregg Carson, 737 First St. South.
Beckley has helped with Auxiliary fund raisers before, but this is her first time on the garden tour.
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"It's just hard to say no to these nice ladies when they ask you to do something," she said.
Beckley said most people who visit comment on the towering maple tree that shades the side yard. She said the tree is well over 100 years old.
Another conversation piece is the white picket fence.
"Picket fences are a dying breed," Beckley said.
With its arbor gateway decorated by a flowering clematis vine, the picket fence welcomes visitors to enter the 1901 "Buchanan house" or relax in the backyard sitting area, listening to the flow of water from the fountain and sipping on "cowboy coffee" Carson makes over the fire pit.
Beckley and Carson are avid collectors of what they call "good junk." They are always on the lookout for items they can repurpose and sell at their "Junk-n-Java" sales. Visitors may notice a number of these finds around the garden cottage Carson built.
Guests can pick up a map at any of the homes in town with directions to the country gardens of Doug and Brenda Zink and Bruce and Merleen Gussiaas.
The Gussiaas gardens are all less than four years old, but the couple has clearly done a lot of back-breaking work in those four years, hauling in tons of rock, planting nearly 3,500 bulbs and building raised beds, a waterfall and two ponds.
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"We're out here a lot," Merleen said.
The Gussiaas annuals -- around 3,000 of them -- start life in the sun room and are transferred to the greenhouse in early spring. The number and variety of flowering plants is amazing, but visitors may want to search for a few unexpected treasures.
In the "Forest of Faces," a meandering path leads through a shady garden with six faces hidden among the trees.
In the flower gardens, some very unusual varieties of day lilies -- like pineapple lilies -- nestle among more familiar species.
In one flower garden, angels sit next to the Katie Jo Cade daylily, a species the Gussiaases are propagating and naming after their daughter, who was the reigning Miss Carrington when she died in an automobile accident in 2001.
Visitors might also notice all the items Bruce built out of driftwood and the many rock gardens.
"The rocks and driftwood -- I think it just gives it such character," Merleen said.
Each garden on the tour has its own character, and visitors will want to time their stays so they can see all five.
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Proceeds from the Yard and Garden Tour will help pay for a Pigg-O-Stat pediatric immobilizer and stabilizer for the radiology department of the Carrington Health Center.
