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Couple has garden paradise at home
By By Alica P. Thiele
Challenger reporter
Challenger reporter
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EmailJuly 21. 2010 8:57AM
When Harvey and Aurora Addengast want to get away to a nature retreat, they step out their back door.
Many nights, they sit on their deck listening to the wind blow through the trees and the trickle of the water over the waterfall in their koi pond. Their grove shades them and buffers them from nearby traffic. Hundreds of flowers provide color as the couple relaxes and sips wine they made themselves.
“We hardly even answer the phone,” Aurora said. “We’re always out here.”
They stroll around their two-plus acres near Valley Springs and see the fruits of 13 years of plantings. Many varieties of dwarf evergreens coexist in beds. There is a weeping blue spruce, its limp twigs bent, its needles cascading toward the ground. A minuet white pine is nearby, compact and rounded. A marigold blue spruce stands less than knee high, it’s needles light green and yellow.
Harvey buys a lot of his specimens from a nursery in Brookings. Others, he sends for. He likes the dwarf trees because they are unusual and their small size means “you can plant more of them,” he said.
When the couple does travel, they like to go to arboretums to seek out new varieties. They like to see mature specimens so they know what their trees will look like many years from now.
Dwarf evergreens are Harvey’s hobby, but “I just like to plant things I like to eat,” Aurora said. Her garden produces corn, beets, sugar peas, squash, onions, beans and many other vegetables, some of which the Addengasts don’t even like to eat. But they do like to give away their 3-pound tomatoes, 8-pound sweet potatoes and other hardy vegetables.
“I bring them to work and weigh them on the baby scale,” said Aurora, who is a medical technician for McGreevy Clinic in Brandon. Her husband is a registered nurse.
The Addengasts don’t use chemicals on their vegetables. Instead, they mulch heavily with leaves and grass. For some vegetables, they’re still using seeds that have come down from seeds a woman at their church gave them 10 years ago.
A wet spring has made this a great growing year, Aurora said. Some of her vegetables are ready to eat. Others plants, like the apple, plum and pear trees and grapevines, aren’t ripe yet. When they are, the Addengasts will make wine and jelly from the fruits.
The couple plans to add another flowerbed this year and even more in the future.
“If you’ve got grass, you’ve got room for flowers,” Harvey said.
Many nights, they sit on their deck listening to the wind blow through the trees and the trickle of the water over the waterfall in their koi pond. Their grove shades them and buffers them from nearby traffic. Hundreds of flowers provide color as the couple relaxes and sips wine they made themselves.
“We hardly even answer the phone,” Aurora said. “We’re always out here.”
They stroll around their two-plus acres near Valley Springs and see the fruits of 13 years of plantings. Many varieties of dwarf evergreens coexist in beds. There is a weeping blue spruce, its limp twigs bent, its needles cascading toward the ground. A minuet white pine is nearby, compact and rounded. A marigold blue spruce stands less than knee high, it’s needles light green and yellow.
Harvey buys a lot of his specimens from a nursery in Brookings. Others, he sends for. He likes the dwarf trees because they are unusual and their small size means “you can plant more of them,” he said.
When the couple does travel, they like to go to arboretums to seek out new varieties. They like to see mature specimens so they know what their trees will look like many years from now.
Dwarf evergreens are Harvey’s hobby, but “I just like to plant things I like to eat,” Aurora said. Her garden produces corn, beets, sugar peas, squash, onions, beans and many other vegetables, some of which the Addengasts don’t even like to eat. But they do like to give away their 3-pound tomatoes, 8-pound sweet potatoes and other hardy vegetables.
“I bring them to work and weigh them on the baby scale,” said Aurora, who is a medical technician for McGreevy Clinic in Brandon. Her husband is a registered nurse.
The Addengasts don’t use chemicals on their vegetables. Instead, they mulch heavily with leaves and grass. For some vegetables, they’re still using seeds that have come down from seeds a woman at their church gave them 10 years ago.
A wet spring has made this a great growing year, Aurora said. Some of her vegetables are ready to eat. Others plants, like the apple, plum and pear trees and grapevines, aren’t ripe yet. When they are, the Addengasts will make wine and jelly from the fruits.
The couple plans to add another flowerbed this year and even more in the future.
“If you’ve got grass, you’ve got room for flowers,” Harvey said.
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Aurora Addengast points out the sunflowers in a bed at her rural Valley Springs home. In the foreground is what Addengast called a weed that she thinks is too pretty to cut down. In the background is a koi pond. Photo by Alica P. Thiele |  |
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