POLLINATORS WELCOME!
Look for unique plants at this stop on Mt. Lebanon garden tour
Eight years ago, master gardener Lyn Babcock moved to a dead-end street in Mt. Lebanon that backed up against Robb Hollow Park. “Nothing was here,” she says. “No stairs, no plants, just a retaining wall.”
OK, there were irises growing along the driveway. But, she didn’t like irises.
“I don’t grow anything I don’t love,” she insists.
Yet the irises remained as she began planting a small garden filled with unique perennials and shrubs that bloom throughout the spring, summer and fall in white, pink, yellow, orange, red and purple.
You can visit her garden today along with six others on the 33rd Mt. Lebanon Public Library Garden Tour. The selfguided tour runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. andtickets are $25 at the library Sunday.
You may find larger, more formal gardens on the tour, but you won’t find many with such a variety of pollinator magnets, many of them native plants.
Let’s start with the backyard trellis flanked by a pink ‘New Dawn’ climbing rose and a large ‘Aphrodite’ sweetshrub with dark red flowers.
“It wasn’t supposed to get this big,” Babcock says, without much regret. “I love this color red.”
Next to it is a long bed jammed with pink and white milkweed, orange butterfly weed, golden oregano, white Culver’s root, orange Geum and Spigelia marilandica, commonly known as Indian pink.
“I don’t know why it’s called that,” she says. “It’s not pink.”
This native perennial, often found in woods and along streams, is actually bright red with yellow starlike flowers on top.
The colorful flowers draw butterflies, moths, hummingbirds and “those tiny little native bees,” Babcock says.
They also attract hungry rabbits and deer from the nearby park. They seem to especially enjoy purple coneflowers and black-eyed Susans, whose distinctive black and gold flowers were nowhere to be seen on the day we visited.
This organic gardener doesn’t use herbicides, but she sprays a variety of repellents — “You have to use several because they get used to one,” she says.
Kipling, her beloved Leonberger, isn’t much help, “He’s too slow.”
Her husband, Ted, built a gate that keeps some of the deer out, but there are lots of other places they can enter. “They walk right down the street,” she says.
No one eats the fuzzy lamb’s ear that never flowers, which is why Babcock planted it. “I don’t like the flowers.”
Other beds hold blue Amsonia, white Penstemon and dwarf goatsbeard, yellow lady’s mantle, purple Allium and cranesbill, bright yellow ‘Fireworks’ goldenrod and red hot pokers. Jack-inthe-pulpit and bear’s breeches are grown for their unique carnivorous flowers and striking lobed foliage, respectively.
Some plants are sentimental – a lacecap hydrangea with red stems from her mother-in-law’s garden and a redbud
tree like the one she planted in her son’s yard when her daughter-in-law became a U.S. citizen.
And some are just plain cool, like the blackberry lily with bright orange flowers and purple-black fruit in the fall. “The hummingbirds love them,” Babcock says.
In front, the lawn shrinks a little each year as the master gardener expands and fills the serpentine beds with more interesting plants, including ‘Dazzleberry’ Sedum, dwarf ironweed and a ‘Dancing Peacock’ Japanese maple tree.
“That used to be all grass,” she says, pointing to a large bed with a crisp, curving edge.
The lawn and edging are her husband’s responsibility, and he doesn’t mind having less to mow.
He accompanies her on trips to the nursery, mostly Flora Park Garden Center in South Park. He sometimes chooses plants, but mostly leaves the gardening to his wife.
“It’s my passion, my quiet place,” she says. “I take a book, a camera and binoculars.”
Pondering her garden, she even changes her mind sometimes. The bearded irises have lost their scented flowers, but their spiky bluish foliage still lines the driveway.
“Now I really like my iris,” Babcocksays, laughing.