Katrina Warnick
Adams County Master Gardener
Claudia Williams was my friend and gardening was our favorite pastime together. When I moved into my neighborhood I received a hearty welcome from this neighborhood ambassador. She came up our steep driveway bearing a housewarming basket and a smile. Her arrival put her in the midst of our self-made construction zone. I felt uneasy at my poor ability to host her, let alone keep her frail, 70 plus year old frame safe from the noise and dust. I
learned immediately that she was a firecracker. With a few words, she put my mind at ease and offered to roll up her sleeves to help the boys as she smiled at me mischievously.
As I began to investigate the gift basket she brought, I discovered the beginning of a beautiful friendship. She had brought me two new house plants and a handwritten note with her phone number and address. My husband smiled at me as he recognized that her address was the very same property that showcased the landscaping I had been coveting since we first considered moving into the neighborhood. I still smile at this memory.
Our homes are perched at the top of a little mountain in Fayetteville. When I say "top", I mean literally the top, since the bottom of the neighborhood is 700' elevation and our homes at the top are at 1,400‘ elevation. There are definitely two microclimates in our neighborhood, complete with a snow line separating them. The landscaping proves it too. The homes at the bottom of the neighborhood are the first to have their daffodils bloom - almost a full week ahead of ours last year. Their vegetables seem to come in
faster and longer and their crape myrtles are just a bit more robust each year. Claudia’s yard shows off what we can accomplish at the top of the neighborhood. I think of her yard as having four diverse sections, which in combination offer year-round interest.
The horticultural journey of her property begins between her front yard drive and the road. This area hosts a mini grove of mixed evergreens over a bed of pine needles. This provides shade over her home in the summer and year-round privacy from the road. The diversity of blue spruce, Australian pine and weeping pine ensures a mix of colors and textures for the eye. As you drive up to her home, the front yard is a small patch of grass bordered by stone-edged beds that are overflowing with hostas, bleeding hearts,
flowering bushes and trimmed evergreen bushes. These beds are also host to a patch of bamboo, the only planting regret I ever heard Claudia lament. Its invasive nature is one she fights yearly as she cuts it back. There are also ornamental trees like American hornbeam, weeping cherry and flowering pear.
The sides of her home and back yard are bordered by an elegant wrought iron fence that protects her raised beds from the deer. Inside the fence she trains clematis up arches, sits under the wisteria in the afternoons and enjoys the bright flowering azaleas. She chose to create a bed of stone around several raised beds to allow her to plant easier and focus less on lawn care. The beds along the fence are home to Japanese maples, cedars, more bleeding hearts and a mix of flowering bushes and ground covers. The beds in
the center are where she grows her vegetables all summer long. Finally, the back of the home is where her style begins to meet the native Pennsylvania forest. The Japanese maples are intermixed with oak, red maple and more evergreens. Foraging deer are often seen out her back windows as they make their way into the state forest.
It didn’t take long for Claudia and I to begin our friendship. We moved into the neighborhood in March and, by April, Claudia’s yard was full of my favorite flowers - herbaceous peonies. She had dish sized white and pink blooms that scented her driveway. She was always quick to offer me a cutting of these precious flowers. From her I learned that one can take the bud of a peony and keep it in the fridge for up to 8 weeks. When you are ready to have it bloom in the house, just remove the bud from the fridge and place it
in a vase of water and it will open in about a day.
Another good tip for peony care is to trim off faded flowers down the leaf to prevent the plant from continuing to send energy to any faded flowers. Later in the year I walked up to her place and found all of her peonies trimmed almost to the ground. Claudia observed my surprise at the state of her peonies and explained that once it gets good and cold outside, you want to trim them back that far to get good healthy plants again next year. Learning about peonies showed me how generous, considerate and full of knowledge
Claudia could be.
I began the habit of visiting with Claudia often in her home. She was not just an avid gardener but also a painter and general aficionado of the arts. We enjoyed going for lunch together, checking out local art shops and we even tried creating pottery together. When the world changed with the COVID pandemic, we decided to continue our friendship out of doors. I chose to forego installing my own vegetable beds and worked with Claudia tending her raised beds. This time together was often the only interaction we had out
of isolation those first few months. She shared her stories and life advice with me while I talked her into trying to grow a few new things, like Brussels sprouts and beets.
Together we learned not to let the soil of the onions stay saturated or you get soggy onions. When we discovered little black dots on our Brussels sprouts, we learned that this was a sign of a caterpillar infestation. Since it was still early in the growing season, we cut off the crowns and we were happy to see them re-grow, though we ultimately still lost most of the crop to another round of caterpillar infestation. Our beets and carrots grew to our delight, yet they tried our patience as we wanted to harvest them as
soon as we saw green sprouting from the ground. The most successful crop, though, was the tomatoes. We kept them watered and harvested often.
After our summer harvest we cleaned the garden and tucked away our tools for the season. Our visits became less frequent as we had to wait for the warmer days to visit outside. Then something changed with Claudia. Within a short month her health drastically declined. My firecracker friend had less energy and was no longer herself. It was just a few weeks after her 77th birthday that she passed away in her home with family around. COVID-19 is not to blame for her departure but I do feel it can take credit for bringing
two gardening souls together in friendship this year.
I miss my friend Claudia and I wanted to share our story with you. I hope you take from this that friendship can be found anywhere, anytime, with the most unexpected people. You just have to plant a little seed together.
Read other articles by Katrina Warnick
