Wednesday, June 23, 1999
Lebanon hosts tour of gardens
Annual show features 6 stops
BY JENNY CALLISON
Enquirer Contributor
LEBANON — Lilies and daylilies reach through the wrought-iron fence of Kathy McGurn's garden like a colorful welcoming committee.
They'll greet visitors who browse Ms. McGurn's side yard on this weekend's annual Historic Lebanon Garden Tour. The garden is one of six on the tour.
Ms. McGurn enjoys collecting unusual plants. She learns about them and orders them online. She encounters them at conservatories and arboretums. She sometimes propagates them from cuttings and from seed. Sometimes she's not sure what will come up.
Sea holly, mother-in-law tongue and miniature holly share space with several varieties of hostas, lamb's ear, dwarf lilac and spirea.
A large bottle brush buckeye shrub anchors another corner of the garden, bristling with creamy blossoms.
“I've seen very few in residential gardens,” Ms. McGurn says of the shrub. “They make a nice garden accent and are a four-season plant.”
Ms. McGurn is primarily an organic gardener, making her peace with slugs and other garden pests.
This is the ninth year for the garden tour, sponsored by the Lebanon Council of Garden Clubs. Proceeds from the event will help maintain the council's headquarters at the historic train station, which is also on the tour this year. Garden club members will also use proceeds to purchase plant materials for downtown planters and public gardens throughout the city.
Stops on the garden tour give visitors ideas for garden design and content. One stop is a family garden centered around a jacuzzi and swim ming pool. Another is a three-acre spread covered in ornamental grasses, ground cover and many shades of green, with antique farm equipment and tools as accents. A third garden features an adjacent vegetable plot and perennial plot, herb gardens, and a pond.
“We're even featuring one gardener's first attempt to bonzai a cutleaf Japanese maple,” said Mary Pat Austing, the Council's publicity chairwoman.
Area gardeners can indulge their fancies at two tours this weekend. The Des Fleurs Garden Club of Oxford also is holding its annual “Oxford in Bloom” tour from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.
For information about the Oxford event, call 523-5510.
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