A pollinator haven in Worcester
The owners, former farmers, bought the Victorian as an investment property. When they downsized into it, they created a robust flowering garden.
A bee flits around the yellow center of a pink rose. “It’s the cutest thing,” Suzanne Shank enthused as she watched the bug dart back and forth.
Thanks to years of effort, her backyard in Worcester, Montgomery County, is a happy place for birds, bees, and butterflies. While she is not a “purist” about restricting her garden to native plants, she said, most of her annuals and perennials attract pollinators. She uses no chemicals.
Previously, Suzanne and her husband, Doug, lived on a 35-acre farm in Skippack where they grew flowers and vegetables and tended 21 head of beef cattle.
They bought a three-story brick Victorian in Worcester, which had been converted into apartments, in 2001 as an investment.
When they decided to downsize from the farm in 2016, the Shanks moved to the Victorian, extending the first floor for their living space. They added two covered porches in the rear with corbel-trimmed columns to match the front porch of the house, which was built in 1895.
At the time, the 60-by-80-foot backyard consisted of grass, pachysandra, a dogwood tree, a rhododendron bush, and a red-roofed gazebo. The Shanks restored the gazebo and got rid of the grass.
To dig up layers of clay and replace them with soil, Suzanne had assistance from landscaper Drew Hautzinger. “I’ve known him since he was a boy,” she said, when they both attended Church of the Messiah in Lower Gwynedd.
Hautzinger laid out the rectangular and round patios and spray-painted where his “church lady” wanted paths of coarse gravel topped with fine red gravel. Here and there along the paths are butterfly- and frog-shaped pavers Suzanne purchased from Floral & Hardy Garden Center in Skippack.
Suzanne transplanted hostas from the farm and planted orange daylilies, astilbes, coral bells, Joe Pye to attract butterflies, yellow and magenta yarrow, foxgloves, pinks, sedums, and more. There is a kitchen garden of parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, as well as lettuce and arugula. New this year are eggplant, tomatoes, and squash.
Birds, butterflies, and bees are not the only creatures who benefit from the garden. Every spring, yellow forsythia blooms on the wrought iron fence the Shanks installed. In September, Doug cuts back the green-leafed branches, which are transported to the Philadelphia Zoo, frozen in small batches, and fed to the giraffes and gorillas for a winter treat.
Suzanne cultivates the garden while Doug gives her, he teased, “an extreme amount of support and muscle.”
Colorful glass flower sculptures came from a gallery in the Poconos. A bright blue birdbath was purchased from the The Rhoads Garden in North Wales.
A pump over an artesian well provides water to the garden year-round. “Birds love having somewhere to get a drink when everything is frozen,” Suzanne said.
Blue wicker chairs on a back porch belonged to Suzanne’s paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Borchers. Garden implements are stored on shelves in a cabinet on the porch. The cabinet was custom-built by an Amish woodworker. Suzanne painted bucolic scenes on the door.
Her nature-themed watercolors adorn the walls of the first-floor apartment. The decorative transom above the double doors opening onto a porch came from a parsonage in Norristown.
Suzanne and Doug met at Norristown High School when he was a senior and she was a junior. In 1965, a year after they married, Suzanne opened Atlas Travel. Doug worked as an accountant for a few years before joining her in the business which they still operate. The couple have a daughter, Diana, and a grandson, Walter.
In early June, the Shanks welcomed visitors on a Norristown Garden Club sponsored tour.
In preparation, Suzanne planted zinnias and marigolds to replace the snapdragons and other flowers that had wilted in days of rainy weather.
She gave tour-goers handouts with information about growing a pollinator garden. Her own horticultural education has come from online courses and books, and from friends with whom she compares notes.
“Mostly,” she said, “I’ve learned by just doing.”
“I would love everyone to take a part of their lawn and turn it into a flowering garden,” she said. “It would be such a help to our bees and butterflies.”
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