A Glimpse Of The Garden

By Nancy K. Crevier

“A Glimpse Of The Garden” is a miniseries focusing on the heart of a gardener’s work — a special spot, an extraordinary plant, a place of respite, or a place that evokes a heartfelt memory. What is down the garden path of your friends and neighbors? What is down your garden path?

“Our garden is the whole landscape,” said Anita Rebong, of the property that she and her husband, Dr Efren Rebong, have spent more than 20 years transforming from a wasteland of overgrown cedars and weeds into the lush eyescape that it is today.

Their home rises from a bed of color and texture provided by the astilbe, ornamental grasses, monarda, sedum, hosta, day lilies, buddleia bushes, cleome, hydrangea, and Japanese maple that surround it. Fluffy pink filipendula blossoms rise above a bed of still more day lilies, spiderwort, and meadow rue with airy lavender flowers abuzz with bees, in mid-July. The Rebongs have developed the gardens, learning as they went along what did and did not work. What does not fit into the gardens or must be protected from the resident ground hog goes into containers on the back deck, providing yet another colorful scene on which to rest the eye.

“Our gardens are progressive, with something different blooming every month. It’s eclectic, but it complements nature,” said Dr Rebong. Even after two decades, the Rebongs continue to add to the gardens, particularly to their massive collections of Japanese maples and day lilies. “I think I have over 30 varieties of day lilies,” said Ms Rebong, “and I’m still buying. If I see a variety that I don’t have, I want to put it in.”

Double and single day lilies begin to bloom in mid-July, a cacophony of yellow, red, orange, peach, maroon, pink, and white. The challenge, said Ms Rebong, is to outwit the deer that find the lilies attractive in a highly destructive way, and to make the time to enjoy the brief period in which they bloom.

For Dr Rebong, it is the broad selection of Japanese maples that has captured his heart. He has collected 20-some types of the plant, he said, and the varietal names of each roll off of his tongue as easily as he might recall the name of a very good friend. The maples range from broad, short bushes pruned to show off the bonsai-like curving trunks to tall, showy trees 20 feet tall. They have deeply palmated leaves, or nearly oval leaves. The leaves are red, bronze, variegated, lime green, sea green, or deep pine green. Some of the Japanese maples are at their showiest at the height of summer, others blaze with color in the fall, and still other varieties add color to the winter landscape with thin branches of blood red, or scrappy bark that stands out against the snow.

Several varieties of Japanese maple are the focal point in one garden. Strategically placed among large, smooth rocks and a border of dwarf and black-stemmed bamboo plants, and stands of six-foot-tall ornamental grasses, the Rebongs have strived to create a space with an Oriental theme.

The Rebongs find that gardening provides a sense of calm and serenity, and even in difficult times, a salvation.

“When our son died, nearly ten years ago,” recalled Ms Rebong, “gardening helped me so much. To just go out and dig, and talk to him… It helped so that I didn’t feel the pain, except the pain that comes with gardening.”

Gardening is fulfilling, said the Rebongs. “You work hard and it is so beautiful when it blooms.”

That is what is down the garden path at the Rebongs.