How do her gardens grow? Jennifer Guercio is hard at work on a Garden Walk showcase
One of the high points of the Garden Walk Buffalo is the spectacular gardens that surround the picture-perfect Painted Lady Victorian at 755 W. Delavan.
From the front curb to the back fence, the English and tropical gardens offer a rich mix of perennials and annuals in bright colors, while hostas and sedum contribute interesting shapes and shades of green. Behind the house, a dining area is nestled under a grape arbor and koi glide through the dappled pond.
Amid this breathtaking beauty and peace, Jennifer and Jim Guercio welcome visitors in elegant Victorian-era garden-party garb.
What visitors don’t see is how much hard work goes into designing, planting, maintaining and preening this garden, which literally stops traffic in July.
“I had somebody ask me one time if I was out there a couple minutes a day,”
Jennifer says, laughing ruefully. “But true gardeners know.”
And it isn’t just the showplace where they live that benefits from the Guercios’ work. They also own rental properties at 716 W. Delavan and across the back fence on St. James Place. All three are on the Garden Walk.
This year, the Guercios started a large project at 43 St. James Place, replacing a mostly cement backyard parking pad with a brick patio surrounded by flowers and greenery. As the Guercios work on this ambitious project, they will also plant annuals for color, prune and deadhead their perennials, and polish every inch of the gardens for the thousands of visitors they will receive during the Garden Walk.
Front yard work
The house at 43 St. James Place had two major problems when Jennifer and her late husband, Gregory Owen, bought it in 1996 — the foundation was cracked, and, just as important to her gardener’s eye, the small, square front yard was “mostly dandelions and weeds.”
“The foundation was in bad shape, and when they removed the stone, they were just going to haul it off to the dump,” Jennifer says. “I said, ‘Wait a minute! Put that over here!’ ” The irregular limestones now encircle the yard, raising it a bit from the sidewalk traffic. “We raised all the flower beds, we put the brick patio in and, voila, no grass.”
Next came the planting. In the English-style garden in the front, Jennifer’s early season choices were daffodils and tulips— she’s particularly pleased with a grouping of soft pink multipetaled ‘Angelique’ tulips — and a dwarf ‘Miss Kim’ lilac bush closer to the porch. Her bushes, ‘Goldflame’ spirea and its hybrid, ‘Goldmound,’ provide color in their foliage and small reblooming flower clusters.
“We also like to do a lot with ivy as a foundation planting,” says Jennifer, “But you have to be careful with that, that it doesn’t overtake everything else.”
A new pink ‘Knock Out’ rose bush nestles in the niche next to the steps.
“I don’t plant much that’s suburban, which is what I call it,” says Jennifer. “Suburban and urban plantings are very different. Suburban has a lot more area to cover, so they have more grass space.”
With three gardens to maintain, plantings at the rental properties must be low-maintenance, Jennifer says. “The perennials help with that, but I have to add some annuals for color all summer long. Most tenants enjoy it from the porch, and if they water, that’s unusual, which is fine,” she says. “They pay for living here, and I do the maintenance.”
This year, the Guercios plan to replace the single black cast-iron railing segment with a fence of the same color and material, which gives the house the ambience of a brownstone.
Jennifer will do a bit more planting in the front, but the backyard is where she and Jim will do the most work this year.
After Gregory’s death, Jennifer married Jim, who is retired from his job as maintenance supervisor for the dorms at the UB North Campus. The two met as she worked in one of her front gardens. He wasn’t a gardener — “he still isn’t!” she says, laughing — but with wheelbarrow, ax and shovels, he helps with the heavy work.
Tackling the back
The backyard of 43 St. James was utilitarian. A driveway along the side of the house led to a large cement parking pad, overlooked by a cement porch. By mid-May, the parking pad was torn out, a layer of medium- sized gravel had been spread, and a mound of smaller gravel was piled up.
It was still stark, but the makings of a green and flowered oasis stood by. Tubs of ‘Goldflame’ spirea bushes, which were dug out during a neighborhood project in the fall and had overwintered in tubs in the Guercios’ basement, stood lined against the cement porch. And Jennifer had big plans.
“I’ve got a ‘Limelight’ hydrangea that’s going in, a rose of Sharon, a rose or two, a lot of hostas, and if I see something exciting I’ll probably pop that in too,” she says. “The goal is to make a private seating area for tenants.”
While some may be intimidated by Jennifer’s expertise, she rushes to reassure them that she is self-taught. “I’m not a Master Gardener, I’m just a person who is very avid about gardening, and I think that makes a big difference,” she says. “So many people say, ‘Oh, well, you’re a Master Gardener, you know how to do all this stuff.’ I have learned through years of experience, trials and tribulations, losses, failures, and you just have to keep trying.”
GARDENING TIPS FROM AN EXPERT
Jennifer Guercio, with the help of her husband, Jim, has developed some tricks and tips as she designs, plants and maintains the gardens at the three neighboring houses they own.
• Before you plant anything, think about what areas of your garden will be covered with snow shoveled off sidewalks, driveways and the street. “I have to think, where’s the snow going to go, and what’s it going to crush?” says Jennifer. One great solution, she says, is hostas, which die back to ground level in the fall. Tulips also vanish. Rosebushes, which lose their leaves but must keep their branches, will not do well in areas where snow will be piled. “They go up against the house,” she says.
• Use bungee cords to bind bushes and shrubs before the snow falls. “I wrap them tightly around roses, around lilacs, any kind of bush that would crush under the weight of snow,” says Jennifer. The soft stretchable cords don’t cut into the bark, and allow the branches to move with the wind. “You can also use them for redirecting, pulling up branches and reshaping trees,” she says.
• Even if your garden must be in tip-top shape on a certain date — for the Garden Walk, a family get-together or another occasion — choose plants that peak in different parts of the season to provide lasting color, texture and interest. In early May, the small front garden on St. James Place had already bloomed with daffodils and was packed with tulips and an early planting of marigolds, which could survive a late frost. “I do have my geraniums, but they’re in pots,” she says.
• Share plants with other gardeners in your neighborhood and watch for soil, stone, and even plants that might be discarded when homeowners or businesses renovate. Also, swap plants for variety. “I have brought many plants from my own house — forget-me-nots, feverfew, snow on the mountain,” she says. “I’ve split the hostas and shared them with the neighborhood. We must have 100 plants now.”
— Anne Neville
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