(Jan Canty)
SALT LAKE CITY – It’s time to escape into a beautiful backyard garden.
A couple weeks ago, Maria and Taun toured Andrea Simondi’s waterwise garden in Spanish Fork, Utah. Andrea has interest in waterwise gardening, so she has her own right in her backyard. Her waterwise garden is massive and has a wide variety of plants and vegetables.
The first plant that they looked at was the blue mist spirea. “You can cut it down in the fall like a perennial, and it blooms from July until frost,” said Taun.
The next part of the garden Andrea introduced was what she calls her “tea garden.” This is where she grows chamomile.
Taun saw that Andrea’s growing celery, and he pointed out that it’s not a common vegetable for people to grow. “Utah actually used to be a major celery-producing state,” he said.
One of Andrea’s goals with her waterwise garden is to attract wildlife back. She has two to three patios arranged in her yard to give her different options on where to sit and enjoy the wildlife and the view that she has created.
Andrea says that not everything you plant will grow. There were some things that she had to replace because they weren’t growing, while there were others that surprisingly grew just fine on their own.
Another unique feature of her garden is that it has tall butterfly bushes that cover the windows and allow her to have some privacy in her home. She has a few that are three years old and two that are as old as 20. Taun says you can tell the difference by the size of the limbs inside the bush.
Andrea also has some bee balm, which bees love. Maria noticed that it smells like mint. That means it’s a mint plant, and Taun says they bloom from June to frost.
This isn’t the end of the tour. As Andrea guides Maria and Taun through her yard, she continues to surprise them with the way she designed it and her reasoning behind it.
Want to see the rest for yourself? Watch the full video tour here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aI1j044tKI
The KSL Greenhouse is on every Saturday from 8-11 a.m. You can follow the show on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.