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The Garden Of The Year

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By PENNY BRAGG, Special to the Tribune

Published: February 13, 2008

PLANT CITY - When the Plant City Garden Club went to give the Garden of the Month award to Doug and Lisa Granger of Heathcoe Road in January 2007, we found their story about how they came to own that property is a tale worth telling.

The story continues as they were awarded the Garden of the Year award for 2007.

As with all gardeners, their gardens are a work in progress with much happening over the past year. It all started when the Grangers got an offer on the home they were in; they accepted the offer even though they had nowhere to go.

Doug Granger saw the "for sale" sign placed on the property they now own. The 5 acres used to be a fish farm in the '60s. The area was all Florida sugar sand and overgrown with palmettos.

Well, now stands the home they built in May 2006 with a trio of sabal palms to the left of the house and a duo of the palms to the right.

Heathcoe is a quiet road with an out-in-the-country feeling, yet it's close to everything.

At the entrance to the serpentine driveway are brick pillars with large fluted-glass lanterns in the shape of pineapples. From one of the pillars swings open a huge wrought-iron gate, which sports a medallion that also bears the pineapple motif.

The pineapple is the sign of hospitality in Hawaiian culture and has long been used in Southern and Early American decor.

The brick pillars, which also have potted ferns at their bases, are found on either side of the steps leading up to the front porch, as well as near the garage doors on the side of the house.

In the front and on the side of the house as well as in the yard, the Grangers have made use of the Knock Out rose, which has been touted as being one of Florida's best landscape roses. The roses are in contrast to the contiguous rows of dark green English dogwood.

The Grangers have kept most of the original live oaks and many of the palmettos, but they have transformed the sugar sand and scrub plants into a beautiful lawn of Bahamian and Bermuda grass; nestled under the branches of the live oaks are a couple of red Adirondack chairs. Each of the live oaks is an oasis. Some are ringed with lush ferns, and others are surrounded with azaleas and red camellias and blue lily of the Nile.

On the lanai is a planter Doug Granger built for his wife that runs the length of the veranda. She has filled it with queen of the Nile, caladiums, ferns, orchids and other plants.

About 90 percent of the Grangers' plantings came from Mike and Lynn Warren of Warren Tree Sales. The Grangers briefly considered doing a plot plan for their gardens, but opted for the more casual approach.

Penny Bragg is a member of the Plant City Garden Club.

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