FEATURES
See Pell City in bloom on Saturday
Laura Nation-Atchison
06-18-2008
Take one turn, and you’ll find an abundance of daylilies leading the way down a path to the potting shed.
You’ll pass a pond and a fountain or two along the way, depending upon which way you wander.
The garden at Phil and Ann Thomas’s house is meant for enjoying, it’s also meant for fun.
Walking through the huge splashes of summer color, Mrs. Thomas points toward a slope in the garden.
“We even have rooms here,” she says.
And sure enough, on one side of the path, there’s the bathroom, complete with sink, tub and you guessed it, a commode, too.
A little down the path and to the right, there’s the bedroom, with an iron bed set into the ground filled with blooming flowers.
Plans are, Mrs. Thomas said, to add some side tables and yes, there will likely be lamps, too.
She and her husband, Phil, have worked on the grounds surrounding the log home they built on Dry Creek Road in Pell City for 10 years now.
They designed their home themselves, did much of the actual building, and it will also be open for visitors for the Pell City Garden Club’s first Garden Club Tour on Saturday.
Tours are self guided and gardens on the tour will be open from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. The club hosts a tea following the tour from 3 p.m. until 4:30 p.m. at Pell City Center. Tickets are $20, and the event is planned as a fundraiser to support the club’s civic projects.
Other stops on the tour are the gardens of Rusty and Linda Mathews at 2175 Chula Vista Mountain Road, the award winning rose gardens at the home of Taria and Rubina at 130 River Oaks Circle and the wildlife habitat created at Benjamin Moore and Company at 109 Bamberg Drive. Tours at Benjamin Moore will be held every 45 minutes starting at 10 a.m.
Club members have organized a “barn sale” at the Thomas’s home the day of the tour, with all kinds of interesting odds and ends to be offered including a variety of “yard art” and fun things for the garden along with memorabilia from Avondale Mills.
Inside the Thomas’s home, Kim Jennings from Jennings Floral will give demonstrations on drying flowers.
The home holds lost of interesting antiques and collectibles.
The rear deck on the house is surrounded with huge butterfly bushes and other blooming shrubs.
On one wall, the Thomases arranged hog wire to hold moss and have it completely blooming in multi-colored impatients. A fountain mounted on the wall keeps the thirsty flowers happy.
The deck area is also where the couple is experimenting with growing hanging pots of upside down tomatoes-and so far, so good-and there are pots of assorted fruit trees.
Property the home sits on has been in Thomas’s family since the 1940s.
There are about 30 members in the Pell City Garden Club and members have made their talents known throughout the Pell City community.
Projects the club have worked on through the years include landscaping at the Animal Shelter of Pell City, along the medians at Bruce Etheredge Parkway, rose gardens at the Pell City Civic Center, for four Habitat for Humanity Houses and for the John Paul Montgomery home.
The federated garden club has also worked to add butterfly gardens for local schools. The club celebrates its 55th anniversary this fall and is planning a membership drive and a tea.
Tickets for the tour are $20, available by calling 205/884-0384, 205/525-0144 or 205/338-6547. Tickets will also be available today until 2 p.m. at the Pell City Civic Center, and the day of the tour, at each of the stops on the tour.
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About Laura Atchison
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Laura Nation-Atchison is The Daily Home features editor.
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Contact Laura Atchison
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