 Mary
Moritz shares credit for her spectacular garden with Mother Nature ...
and her own mom. That’s because Moritz lives in the home she grew up
in. And her mother’s green thumb gave birth to the garden Moritz now
tends. "Even when I was a kid, my mom had a garden," she
remembers. "But I sort of enlarged it."
Moritz’s colonial-style home in the
Enderis Park neighborhood sits on a typical, rectangular city lot.
Typical, that is, except for the volume and variety of plants and
shrubs that make neighbors pause. In the front yard, Moritz planted
annuals around some shrubs and has some planted pots of geraniums on
the porch. "Then, I have plants next to my back porch stoop, and
I have plants all along the side of my door," she adds.
There are also flower beds all along
the back lot line and a wall that separates her yard from her North
68th Street neighbors. What you’ll find in her garden are annuals
and perennials — and lots of varieties of both. "Typically, I
try to grow things that will grow well in the Wisconsin weather,"
she says. Those plants include black-eyed Susans, Veronicas and purple
Cone Flower.
"I have a big pine tree in the
back corner," she describes. "Under that, I have lilies of
the valley. Every year, I try to do something a little different,
particularly with the annuals ... I might do a different color
combination."
Moritz has maintained her mother’s
regal lilies on the side of the house. "And there’s a large
rose bush along the back wall that was my mom’s, a climbing
rose," she says. That reddish-pink bush, called a Seven Sister
rose bush, goes well with the red and white color scheme she uses to
border the flower beds in the back, but Moritz believes no one hue
dominates. "I have just a real medley of colors," she says.
 For
instance, she has white zinnias, yellow marigolds and purple petunias.
"Then I always use a purple-blue Rhea salvia," she says.
"I think you could liken that to an English cottage garden."
Although Moritz’s family always
maintained a garden, she became more involved in it when she retired
10 years ago as an occupational therapist at St. Luke’s Medical
Center. Once planted, the garden doesn’t take up that much of her
time — about five to six hours a week, she estimates. "I try to
have most of it planted by the beginning of June, all the
annuals," she says. "I’m probably out there a bit every
day, sort of dead-heading things."
She starts planting in mid-May.
"Before that, I do have some bulbs in the garden — tulips and
daffodils — along the side and in the front," she says.
Moritz, a self-taught gardener, says
the garden throughout the summer has color and flowers of interest.
But late July or early August is when it’s in full bloom, and time
for Moritz to enjoy it. Moritz says she takes as much joy in working
the garden as in viewing it. "I really get a great satisfaction
from it," she says. "I like seeing things grow. I really do.
I always say if I move from the house into a condo or something, I
have to have a place to grow things."
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