On July 20, Pineridge Garden Club recognized four area homeowners for their efforts to beautify the community. Nominations for this award are accepted from community members as well as club members. For details about the club visit www.pineridgegardenclub.org or https://www. facebook.com/groups/PineridgeGardenClub.

Garden Descriptions

• Rich and Brenda Ewy, St. Paul Park. Visitors to this house are greeted by large baskets of beautiful begonias hung from the front porch. The front porch is bordered by a large hydrangea and many other colorful pots and plantings. Between the house and the garage is brick pathway flanked by nicely trimmed shrubs that leads to the backyard where colorfully-planted window boxes surround the base of the raised deck, beds of a variety of perennial and annual plants border the back, and a beautiful shade garden with a stone walking path leads to a firepit.

• Cathy and Bob Mitchell, Woodbury. This mixed-use space hosts beautiful flower gardens, plentiful vegetable gardens, and chickens! There is even a plant “orphanage” for plants they are unsure what to do with yet. These lovely flower gardens contain a wide variety of colorful perennials and annuals and are so perfectly placed in beds and borders along the road, in front of the house, along the sides of the house, up the hill, and in the back. There are both sun and shade gardens as well as lovely container flower plants.

• Lenora and Steve Koltes, Cottage Grove. The front of Lenora and Steve’s home features an attractive porch with lovely hanging baskets of Boston ferns, colorfully planted window boxes, and a lovely perennial border garden. A steppingstone path leads from the front of the house through a large grove of evergreen trees blanketed with soft pine needles beneath to the back of the house where Brenda and Steve created a secluded, peaceful woodland retreat surrounded by gardens with a large variety of hostas, ferns, snow-on-the-mountain, mixed perennials, and flowering shrubs.

• Sharon Beard, Cottage Grove. Sharon’s front garden contains a variety of hostas, variegated iris, and other perennial plants that exude a calm, cool feeling. The gardens that border the side of the house and lead into her lush backyard features colorful plantings of alyssum, petunias, bright red roses, and many trellises with boundless clematis vines of various-colors that clamber over the trellises and wooden wall around two sides of the patio. The backyard is surrounded by more beds and borders of perennials and annuals, all lined with a beautiful natural stone edge.

Cathy and Bob Mitchell (right) with club member Linda Johnston. Submitted photo.

Steve and Lenora Koltes (left) with club member Nicholas Trimbo. Submitted photo.

Sharon Beard (left) with club member Cindy Mueller. Submitted photo.

Brenda and Rick Ewy (right) with club member Nicholas Trimbo. Submitted photo.