Visitors can see ‘hidden gardens’

The Kalmia Club will have its 11th annual "HIdden Gardens of Lambertville" tour this weekend.

By: Linda Seida
   LAMBERTVILLE — Gardening at Katherine Marriott’s home was a delicate balance for many years, weighted toward her boys’ need for a space to play basketball in fall and winter against her own need for a personal outdoor space in spring and summer.
   For a while, the boys’ basketball playing destroyed early and tender spring shoots. Mrs. Marriott was relegated to a patio.
   Now that her boys are 17 and 15 years old, they’ve taken down the net, and they and their sister, 8, have left the garden area to mom. She and her husband, Douglas Marriott, turned their small space at 48 S. Main St. into a relaxing, illuminated spot where Mrs. Marriott can read in the evenings while enjoying perennial beds, fragrant vines scrambling over fences and containers full of colorful annuals.
   "It became an outdoor garden room in the summer," Mrs. Marriott said.
   The family uses it from late April to October.
   Her garden is among those on the Kalmia Club’s 11 annual Hidden Gardens tour set for this weekend.
   Mrs. Marriott, who visited numerous other Lambertville gardens on previous Kalmia Hidden Garden tours, describes her own as "extremely small," but visitors say it reminds them of a New Orleans courtyard. There is also a fountain surrounded by stones the family has brought back from their travels to Maine.
   She didn’t always have a huge interest in gardening, Mrs. Marriott said. But time spent digging and planting became a way to soothe life’s rough edges during a health crisis her father went through about 10 years ago. The hobby that calmed her during those difficult days also has brought her closer to neighbors as well as gardening buddies in Lambertville.
   The Marriotts’ garden has a number of clematis and other climbers, including a black-eyed Susan vine, morning glories and their alter ego, the night-blooming and fragrant moonflowers.
   In keeping with the neighborhood atmosphere, a pink rose that belongs to a friend in the next lot trails over the fence to share its blossoms with the Marriotts.
   Besides the Marriotts’ garden, the one belonging to neighbor Claire Noon also is among those featured this year on the tour, which will be held Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine.
   Another South Main Street garden, this one belonging to Mrs. Marriott’s friend and fellow garden center habitué, Melissa Mantz, features passalong plants—gifts from the gardens of neighbors and friends. These include bleeding hearts, hostas, ferns and astilbe. There’s also an unusually large toad lily, which the tour describes as "gargantuan."
   The tour will feature 13 gardens. Among them are more than 100 orchids in Francis Twomey’s and Betty Olden’s garden on South Union Street, Bill Kokas’ European-style courtyard with a seating area shaded by weeping birches on North Main Street and the gardens of the Bridge Street House Bed and Breakfast and LaSalle Gallery, 75 and 73 Bridge St., respectively.
   Tickets are $15 the day of the tour or $12 in advance. They are available at the Kalmia Club at 39 York St.
   They also may be purchased at the Blue Raccoon, 550 Union Square, New Hope; A La Mode, 600½ Bear Tavern Road, West Trenton; and in Lambertville at Events in Style, 36 Perry St., and Homestead Market, 262 N. Main St.