EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a three-part series following Jim and Jennifer Guercio from spring planting to the Buffalo Garden Walk. We will visit them and their gardens again in July.

Jennifer and Jim Guercio are growing much more than the poppies, hostas, lilies and marigolds that thrive in the stunning garden at their rental property on St. James Place.

They are growing community.

Gardening is “a good way to meet your neighbor, help your neighbor and make your community look so much better,” says Jennifer, who has spruced up the small front garden and is installing a new back brick patio surrounded by plantings for their tenants.

The News is following the progress of the Guercios’ gardening as they tackle this major project on St. James Place, as well as grooming gardens at all three of the nearly adjacent houses they own, for the enormously popular Garden Walk Buffalo on July 25 and 26.

The Guercios’ Painted Lady Victorian at 755 E. Delavan is surrounded by lush tropical and striking English gardens, featuring a pond that shelters immense koi and paths, statuary and fountains. It’s been featured in several magazines and stops traffic year-round with its mixture of striking flowers and foliage.

But improving her own backyard wasn’t enough for Jennifer Guercio. After she and her late husband, Gregory Owen, bought rental houses at 761 W. Delavan and 43 St. James, those properties became blank canvases for her designer’s eye. Especially this year, as Jennifer and Jim, a retired maintenance supervisor at UB, are spending long days replacing the backyard parking pad behind 43 St. James Place with a brick patio, the neighborhood is taking an interest and lending a hand.

Take the day the pallets of bricks were delivered.

“They were dropped off at the curb around noon,” says Jennifer. “You need a permit to leave them there for any length of time, so we had to move them immediately.” That was five pallets holding some 2,500 garden bricks and dozens more 26-pound castle rocks to build walls around beds.

Jim got out his brick tongs, a metal tool that picks up seven bricks at once, and began loading the bricks into a garden cart. Their small tractor pulled the load up the driveway.

After hours of this backbreaking work, a neighbor showed up with his own brick tongs and pitched in. “It worked out pretty good,” says Jim.

Jennifer and Jim are just as often the ones lending a hand. “I help people water their lawns if they have to work all day and I’ve got my hose out anyway, I just use the hose and help them,” she says.

The weedy backyard next to theirs on St. James Place was spread with a pile of leftover topsoil and topped with some extra rolls of sod from a project on West Delavan. The improvement became “kind of a community project,” says Jennifer.

Even the Guercios’ second-floor tenant has gotten into the act, transforming her upstairs patio into a cool green oasis with hanging pots of lush ferns and a sign that reads “Ellen’s Garden.” “She does a beautiful job,” says Jennifer, “and so many people have little flowerpots, it doesn’t have to be elaborate, but it just makes the whole street look so much nicer. We have families that have small children, we have older people, we have professional people, all kinds of people on this street, and it just makes a nice mix of community.”

The garden today

The front of the house on St. James Place is barely recognizable as the same garden that was in late-spring mode in May. The showy tulips have dropped their petals and bowed out, replaced by a bed of spectacular crimson red Papaver orientale “Beauty of Livermore” poppies.

When the poppy petals scatter in the wind, an interesting vase-shaped seed pod remains. “Let these go dry and you will be surprised how the poppies will multiply over time,” says Jennifer.

A long narrow bed of marigolds along the driveway is now fuller and popping with bright orange and yellow flowers. In the mass of green foliage in front of the house, phlox and lilies are beginning the growth spurt that will raise their flowers high. A “Knock Out” rose looks good, but a dwarf “Miss Kim” lilac might be moved. A hibiscus nestles against the house foundation. With so many gardens to plan and plant, Jennifer isn’t sure, but she thinks its eventual flowers will be red.

“I try to buy red stuff for this house because of the trim,” she says. “I try to coordinate my colors to the house to showcase the backdrop. I like variegated leaves, too, that give some color mixed in with green leaves. I think it shows off better.”

The biggest change in the front is the replacement of a single segment of cast-iron fencing by a full black cast-iron fence, a look Jennifer Guercio likes for its urban brownstone ambience. “That was a Saturday project,” she says.

Wild sweet peas are twining up the black fence. “I didn’t even have to plant them — I think the birds did!” she says.

Daylilies and some longer-lasting, later-blooming fragrant lilies are sending up stems. Except for one spot where she’d like to install another clump of daylilies, all is going according to plan.

Brick by brick

The hard work has been taking place along the side and behind the house. Last month, a bed of medium-size gravel had been laid and a pile of crushed limestone, with a fine consistency, had to be spread. But after moving all the bricks to the back, the Guercios discovered that the wheels of the tractor had compacted the bed of crushed limestone too much. So before a single brick could be placed, they added more crushed limestone, tamped it, and measured it again.

Donning “a good pair of leather gloves,” Jennifer grabbed a rubber mallet, a trowel and a small hand shovel. Kneeling on an old piece of carpet, she began the exacting task of fitting the bricks together in a basketweave pattern, randomly distributing the black-sided bricks in the mix for visual interest. She laid about 120 square feet of brick daily, finishing it this week.

While the Guercios worked, the perennials in the narrow backyard continued in their summerlong show. On the right, a newly built tall plank dog-eared fence matches the one on the other side of the yard. Both are painted a light creamy yellow, the color of unsalted butter, which perfectly sets off a thriving clematis vine with saucer-sized purple blooms. “They’re complementary colors. I think I knew that!” she says, chuckling.

Next to the clematis is a peony bush with ruffled deep-pink flowers that have the fragrance of roses. Jennifer has planted some garden phlox along the fence, where it will blossom next to the wild phlox, which Jennifer started from seed.

The wall alongside the cement porch will enclose a bed for “Goldflame” spirea bushes, which were dug out during a neighborhood project, a “Limelight” hydrangea, colorful coleus and ornamental grasses. “I am stockpiling these until I’m ready to plant,” Jennifer says. One bed will showcase a lovely medium green hosta.

Originally, the Guercios had planned to remove and replace the raised cement porch, but now they think they might make a deck on top of the old porch and a set of stone steps to the brick patio. “It incorporates the old and the new. Building up the porch with pillars — that’s going to be next year,” she says. “The tenants are going to have a pretty nice patio.”

But first, the Guercios and 300 other city families will throw open their garden gates to thousands of visitors during Garden Walk Buffalo. We’ll check in with them next month as their focus shifts from long-term accomplishments to polishing every inch of their three gardens.