Getaway Garden
Gene Pulliam is a self-proclaimed country kid, a former Angus cattle ranch owner for 25 years and member of Future Farmers of America. His current job in banking is a world away from the rustic life, which had its start on a farm in Harrisonville, Missouri, about 30 miles outside of Kansas City, where he grew up. When Pulliam’s off-duty, toiling in the yard of his Spanish-style bungalow, he’s reminded of his childhood surrounded by rolling hills and grasslands. “I wanted to create these gardens because they’re the opposite of my corporate job, and I wanted to make sure I had this place that I could go to,” he says.
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Urban Retreat
Thomas Schwartztrauber used to have an urban perennial garden in his Dogtown backyard. “It was fantastic in summer, when all the perennials and herbs are doing what they’re supposed to do,” he says, “but in winter, it just turned into this vacant bowling alley.” He wanted structure. He wanted glorious color year-round. And he didn’t want to waste his time catering to delicate, doomed plants. So he put in 42,000 pavers in tumbled brick and soft gray, planted yew and holly evergreens, and then filled in with Japanese maples—dozens of them.
“I did it in a way I’d call controlled chaos,” he says.
Native Wonder
It may be hard to believe, as you eye the following three pages, resplendent as they are with life and beauty, that Sue Leahy wasn’t much of a gardener until she got hooked on native plants 12 years ago.
But today, her yard—both front and back—is home to nearly 200 species of plants, nearly all of them native to the Midwest. An advocate for sustainable gardening, Sue serves on the board of Wild Ones St. Louis, a nonprofit that seeks to restore and establish native plant communities. She is also passionate about education. That made her decision to open her garden to hundreds of visitors during the 2019 Sustainable Backyard Tour easy.
Romantic Garden
Diana Kathrinus comes by her green thumb honestly. When Kathrinus was growing up, her mother would retreat to her garden oasis after dinner to work in the dirt. The more you pick pansies, she told her daughter, the more they bloom. “She had rose gardens, which she loved,” Kathrinus remembers. “She would start rosebushes from the stems of others from the neighbor across the street.” Kathrinus has continued her mother’s traditions.
One of Kathrinus’ neighbors is Marietta Caiarelli. The two women have lived across the street from each other in Kirkwood for 49 years, and they’re friends, not just neighbors: They’ve sipped glasses of wine on the patio at Caiarelli’s, traveled—both day trips and to Europe—together, and cultivated their gardens. One—Kathrinus’—is a lush cottage garden dappled with pinks, purples, and whites. Caiarelli’s is a little more formal, romantic and traditional yet still accessible. What the women share is a love of knowledge, watching their gardens change, and even some plants between them.
Charming Oasis
When Diana Kathrinus and her husband purchased their sunny yellow home in 1972, there really wasn’t much of a garden to speak of—just some old bushes and other elements that needed to go. She planted hostas in the backyard, the one shady spot on her property. Change came gradually.
Meander up the home’s stone pathway—Kathrinus’ favorite feature—surrounded by lemon and lime thyme, bright green in the spring. Hellebores blossom around the Lenten season. Kathrinus worked at a plant nursery and found joy in studying the greenery, seeing what changed from year to year. So when Marietta Caiarelli longed to transform her yard after her children were grown, she knew whom to turn to. “Diana has a sense of space and is much more meticulous than I am,” says Caiarelli. “She started me out on fixing it up.”
