MY NEIGHBORS GARDEN – By Kay Faught

Many garden tour devotees know about Mira Wingfield and her garden on Schaffer Lane. For those who don’t, Mira is an inspiration to anyone interested in container gardening.

My hope this month is to open your eyes to the possibilities offered with container gardening.  How self-limiting are you with the space you use in your garden? The benefits of container gardening are endless: allowing flexibility, ease in moving plants, transforming clutter to garden art, making the most of poor soil conditions, using vertical and horizontal surfaces, decorating living areas, and limited space issues.  Containers allow it all and provide lots of fun!

Mira moved here 11 years ago from Arizona, newly widowed and wanting to be closer to a daughter and son-in-law.  Leaving a large garden and 200 roses, (gathered when she was involved in the Rose Society) she downsized to her home lot in Jacksonville, keeping only 10 of her favorite roses, but retaining all of the garden pots and containers!  Her love of collecting antiques and unique and historical items translates to her yard.  She collects anything that becomes a container so don’t think just “pots!”

Mira’s use of containers is immediately evident.  A section by the driveway has about 20  pots, some filled with emerging tulips.  Two pots contain roses. Behind them, 8 smaller “brown bean pots” hold late summer bloomers.  Mira will rotate them to the front in summer and move the tulips to the back after their season. The section is an ever- changing “showcase” of what is in bloom.  The front walk is lined with primrose-filled urns, bird bath planters that cascade over the edges and logs and wood carvings filled with ground covers or used as stands for pots. The front entry, shaded by a large tree, has a trio of hanging iron plant holders. Beneath are more containers for shade impatients tucked amid a shade fern. A side bed has wooden barrels planted with Lilies, Japanese lanterns and newly added spring, “Polar Bear zinnias, (an addition from reading my December column!)

Tucked in all the planting areas are sections of logs, and wooden planters.  A large pine, removed years back, was left 4’ tall and became a “post” for a large twig basked filled with red geraniums in summer.  Stumps are filled as well. Where there’s a hole or crevice, it becomes a container!

Mira and I have two shared loves… Dachshunds and Talavera pottery – so I was thrilled when greeted by both!   Her entry has a beautiful blue Talavera urn with more Talavera Mexican pottery on her back patio. Its lattice-covered patio protects her Mexican pottery, in colors of yellows and blues, in all shapes and styles.  Another brick patio holds “in the sun” seating. Surrounded by large cement urns, some Roman-style, others squatty and rose-colored, they offer more planting options enclosing her seating.   For winter months, the gaiety of the pots and the variety of artful plant stakes create garden  “action” even on bleak foggy days.  Another planting area full of 8 Italian terra cotta pots filled with roses is just beyond the seating area. Vertical planting is everywhere with moss-lined containers, planting bags, and baskets – all hanging from Shepard hooks, trees, fencing, or an arbor.

The back beds surrounding the yard have original trees, holly, forsythia, and other shrubs as the anchor. Mira has added camellias, columbines, white lavender and ground cover. She has pruned the shrubbery to create a “canopy,” an art she teaches in her pruning workshops.  It allows open area, increasing air flow and reducing plant disease and allows her container planting to be showcased. One of the beds contains her 10 original tea and floribunda roses in large clay pots…yes, in containers!  Mira stated that the roses are happy but “They don’t like to share space, soil, water, or anything and so they love the pots.”

There is no “plan” with Mira’s garden (although she does love red) and she states that she just buys what she likes and then just finds a container.    Her beds hold white iron settees, bird cages, ladders, and white metal carts and stands, all becoming vessels and holders for plants and pots.  In the spring, an entire shed filled with animal containers, fragile pots, and other pieces will come out, and be integrated into the beds, all to be filled.

Above it all hangs Scandinavian wind bells, Mexican chimes, bird houses and feeders.   I can imagine the floral display of it all as Mira’s garden hobby is done with such joy.  “I have gardened all my life and you can only collect so many antiques!  I love flowers and prefer to grow them rather than buy them.”

Mira’s gardening tip…

“Every living thing communicates if you learn to listen, including plants.  Pay attention…it will tell you when it is sick, thirsty, hungry…but you have to listen to it… my favorite time in the garden is when I water because it’s the time when I can think, converse with myself and listen and communicate with nature and my plants.”

Thanks Mira!  For me….I need to listen more and think outside the box when it comes to where I plant things! (Or maybe PLANT outside the box!)

Kay is the owner of Blue Door Garden Store, located at 155 N Third St.  Specializing in paraphernalia for the home gardener; she carries garden gifts, decor and a wide variety of pots, tools, gloves, and organic products.