Potomac Garden Club Features Local Gardeners

At Beth Cromwell's garden the scent of dill drifted on the breeze as the tour walked through and admired her cottage hilltop garden. Cromwell has Virginia Creeper vines and Yellow Clematis as well as fruit trees, flowers, vegetables, gooseberry and currant bushes. With a smile she said, "it is a work in progress."

Justin Kennedy looking at Columbine flowers at Marin Hall's garden, the first stop on the tour.

At Beth Cromwell's garden the scent of dill drifted on the breeze as the tour walked through and admired her cottage hilltop garden. Cromwell has Virginia Creeper vines and Yellow Clematis as well as fruit trees, flowers, vegetables, gooseberry and currant bushes. With a smile she said, "it is a work in progress."

Hall loves color and variety throughout her hot and sunny flowerbed which wraps around her house into the north facing flowerbed filled with pastels and pinks as well as a fruit and berry area. Although the vegetable garden over the creek struggled (as other gardens did) with a 25 degree morning in June, it grows successfully using companion planting. Hall plants the 'three sisters' together which are corn, green beans and squash and plants carrots and garlic together as well. Companion planting is used so plants can support each other's growth. Some plants like Marigolds can repel certain insects while other plants create shade, add to the soil or act as windbreaks.

The second garden stop was at Laura Swofford's property. Inside her greenhouse she is experimenting with bucket planting. She has drilled air holes in some buckets and not in others to see if the plants grow differently with more oxygen available to the soil.

Swofford has plentiful strawberry plants in a raised bed, many irises, lilacs, peonies and asparagus growing.

Swofford has plentiful strawberry plants in a raised bed, many irises, lilacs, peonies and asparagus growing.

Kathy Settevendemie specializes in native plants. At this final garden stop, sightseers enjoyed more than 250 native species of plants and flowers in her gardens, around her home and on her chicken house 'palace' including the state flower Bitterroot, Rocky Mountain Juniper, Clarkia and Potentilla. The Clarkia is an annual but reseeds itself proficiently. Settevendemie said nurturing and watering native plants makes for amazing growth.

Kathy Settevendemie specializes in native plants. At this final garden stop, sightseers enjoyed more than 250 native species of plants and flowers in her gardens, around her home and on her chicken house 'palace' including the state flower Bitterroot, Rocky Mountain Juniper, Clarkia and Potentilla. The Clarkia is an annual but reseeds itself proficiently. Settevendemie said nurturing and watering native plants makes for amazing growth.