Gardeners to show off green thumbs on 48th annual Troy Garden Walk

TROY — Each year, the Troy Garden Club shows off the best and most devoted gardeners in the community with their Troy Garden Walk.

The Garden Walk gives the public a map to participating homes where the homeowners will present their home gardens, landscaping and horticulture.

“The Troy Garden Club’s much-anticipated 48th garden walk has been named ‘Garden Stories’ and will take place on Wednesday, July 12, and feature six lovely properties — five in Troy and one nearby,” said Garden Club board member Judi Milidrag. “Individual garden names were inspired by well-known Broadway musicals.” She named as examples “How to Succeed in the Garden (By Really Trying),” “My Fair Garden,” and “The Garden King.”

All six gardens will be open rain or shine 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5-8:30 p.m. Those interested can check the Troy Garden Club’s website, www.troygardenclubmi.com, for locations to purchase tickets in advance for $15, and for purchasing tickets online. Tickets also will be available at the Troy Farmers Market on Friday, July 7, by cash or check. Tickets on the day of the event will only be available at the Troy Historic Village for $18 each.

“It’s very rewarding at the end when you see the finished product,” remarked Jean Tejero, who will be hosting one of the stops on the walk with her husband, Teejay Tejero. “You can see people pass by, and they say, ‘Wow, this is a beautiful lawn.’ You hear people appreciating that hard work.”

Teejay Tejero said that getting a home ready for something like the Garden Walk is a lot of work that requires months of preparation, yet his gardening and landscaping is a passion project that he does every year.

“I have not been part of the Garden Walk before,” he said.

One of his neighbors saw his yard and nominated him.

“The Garden Club reviewed it and invited me,” he said. “It’s not a one-day preparation. It’s an all-year preparation. You need to prepare the soil and you trim the hedges before you put the plants in … and you need to work with the weather.”

He added that finding the right garden for his family and for his home is an ongoing project that he has been working on since moving into the home decades earlier.

“I try to select the best colors for the features of the house. We had all sand clay on one side of the house, so I put in an insert when we moved it about 35 years ago. I’ve been doing it ever since, and as you go on, you learn,” Teejay Tejero said. “I tried begonias. I tried dianthus. I tried mixed colors, and it doesn’t always highlight everything else or the house. … I experiment. I’ve tried geraniums and sweet potatoes this year.”

Elizabeth Haggerty and her husband, Michael, also will be featured on the Garden Walk this year, alongside their neighbors, Dave and Danielle Davenport.

“I started about 10 or 12 years ago,” she said. “My original interest in gardening was houseplants that my brother would keep, and he never killed anything. I thought, ‘Well, this is easy.’ It was all mud when we first moved in, and my kids kept dragging it into the house, so I put railroad ties around the trees and put hostas all over the place to keep the weeds down. The hostas all came from a neighbor. When mine grew, I gave some to my neighbor next door.”

Haggerty had a particular challenge in working on her home, since her backyard is completely shaded by trees.

“Gardening in shade was not my thing, so I had to learn how to garden with shade plants. I like color, though, so most of my stuff is perennial,” she said. “Between me and the squirrels and the chipmunks, we tend to the garden. They move things around and I decide whether I like it or not. I spend most of the spring digging up things they decided to transplant and put it where I want it. …  I can just identify plants on my phone. I can always find out what something is and if I will like how it looks when it finishes growing.”

She said that gardening and landscaping isn’t just a hobby for fun, but something that can improve the quality of life for a family and bring neighbors together.

“We swap plants a lot in this neighborhood,” said Haggerty. “I ended up with this nice swooping feature in my backyard, and it flowed toward my neighbor’s backyard, and they thought they would just carry on the line. It adds a noise break and some color to our backyards instead of just looking into the backyards of our neighbors behind us.”

She said her favorite part of gardening is getting to see what surprises Mother Nature has each year and then deciding how to respond.

“I have some catnip for my cats. I grow raspberries because I love raspberry jam. I look for whatever color I can find that grows in the shade, and I always have a lot of hostas,” Haggerty remarked. “Being able to open it up and take up the tree canopy by trimming some low branches really changed the entire backyard.”

The day of the Garden Walk also will feature the Midsummer Arts and Crafts Boutique.

“In addition to the six gardens, the Troy Historic Village at 60 W. Wattles in Troy will offer free admission to our club’s Midsummer Arts and Crafts Boutique,” Milidrag said in an email.

The shop features various vendors and a plant sale 9 a.m.-6 p.m.

“The Village will again feature their elaborate raffle and be selling tickets all day for which you will not have to be present to win,” Milidrag said in an email.

Haggerty said that this year’s Garden Walk is coming at the perfect time, and she can’t wait to show off her hard work.

“I like a lot of color in my plants. I have a bunch … that are supposed to bloom right in time, just in time for the Garden Walk,” she said. “They are supposed to turn bright pink at just the right time this summer.”