Sunday, Jul. 26, 2009

Friendship Garden: Award-winning display in Edwardsville began as simple act of kindness

Ray and Judy Grinter's garden started with a simple act of kindness.

The retirees were building a home on Dunlap Lake and digging their first flower bed in 2007 when Judy's 41-year-old daughter, Dawn Stearns, died of melanoma.

Neighbors didn't want Judy to have to stare at the 45-by-25-foot oval of bare dirt in the sloping backyard, so they planted petunias, marigolds, begonias and other annuals.

"It was such a wonderful gift of friendship," said Judy, 72, a retired elementary school teacher and reading specialist in Granite City.

Ray put up a sign that read "The Friendship Garden."

Today, the Grinter property at 217 East Lake Drive boasts several large beds filled with hostas, daylilies and other colorful perennials.

It's a haven for birds, bees and butterflies, and eye candy for boaters on Dunlap Lake.

The garden is so fully developed, people have trouble believing it's only two years old or that Ray and Judy did all the work.

"Unlike me, (Judy) knows the names of every plant," said her neighbor, Nancy Hanson, an avid gardener. "She has them all staked."

The Grinter yard is one of 13 properties that received Green Thumb Awards from the Edwardsville Beautification and Tree Commission recently.

The program honors residents who go that extra mile to beautify public or private spaces with flowers and other plants, regardless of size, cost or location. Nominations are submitted by neighbors, friends, family members or passersby who appreciate hard work and creativity.

"We really benefited from the heavy spring rain this year," said Wilma Jene Bond, Green Thumb Committee chairman. "All the gardens were very lush."

The Grinters formerly lived in Collinsville. They bought the Dunlap Lake property in the mid-90s and used its small clubhouse and boat dock as a weekend retreat.

Ray designed the new home, a contemporary ranch with a walkout basement and wall of windows overlooking the lake.

"I was an art teacher, but I took architecture (in college)," he said. "I probably should have been an architect."

Ray taught at Edwardsville Junior High School and served as an administrator in gifted education. After early retirement, he bought, rehabbed and sold old houses.

The Grinters' blended family includes seven children and 19 grandchildren.

At the new home, Ray used bricks and stones for serpentine borders around landscaping beds. Judy transplanted perennials from her garden in Collinsville.

"She's serious with flowers," Ray said. "They're her babies."

Today, the original oval bed is filled with red hibiscus, white daisies, yellow coreopsis, tomatoes, herbs and menarda, also known as bee balm, which attracts hummingbirds.

An 8-foot-tall kinetic wind sculpture made of steel, copper and glass provides artistic focus. The Grinters bought it at a Dallas show.

"It was done by Andrew Carson," Judy said. "He's an artist in Seattle."

Higher up the slope, a tree of heaven and two redbuds shade a bed with nearly 100 hostas.

About the same number of daylilies fill a sunnier, two-tier bed to the east. It's centered by a while peegee hydrangea, where cardinals nest.

A mounded bed shaped like a figure 8 dominates landscaping in front. A metal "simplify" sign stands next to a weeping spruce.

"Those are Becky daisies," Judy said, pointing to a mass of white and yellow flowers. "They bloom and bloom and bloom all summer. The more you cut them, the more they bloom. We've always got daisy bouquets in the house."

Accent pieces in the Grinters' garden range from multicolored solar lights to a stained-glass bird bath.

Ray's homemade wren house allows him to peek at eggs without disturbing mother birds.

Perhaps the most unusual yard art is a granite boulder with black and white speckles. Ray calls it a "family heirloom."

His grandfather used a team of horses to drag it out of a farm field near Joliet in the late 1800s.

"He put it in the yard, and my grandmother planted flowers around it," Ray said. "My brothers and sisters always called it the ''dinosaur egg' because it looks like an giant egg cracking open."

The Grinters have a clear division of labor when it comes to the yard.

Judy nurtures the flowers. Ray manicures the lawn. She dead-heads. He plucks out crabgrass.

"See those stones?" Judy asked. "That's the boundary line over which I cannot pass. We have a six-inch rule. If my flowers grow out six inches, he mows them off."

2009 Edwardsville Green Thumb Award winners

* Dave and Stephanie Biggs at 229 Commercial St.

* Dan Faulkner at 211 Fayette Drive.

* Dean and Joan Traw at 11 Northbridge Lane.

* George and Pat Henderson at 316 West Lake Drive.

* Merita Elledge at 511 Valley View.

* Mike and Linda White at 518 W. Fourth St.

* Steve Kossakowski at 1905 Applegate.

* Ken and Jean Kosten at 19 Pine Ridge Court.

* Colin Kremitzki at 914 Grand Ave.

* Elsa and Laren Zeller at 1019 Ruskin Ave.

* Michael Crowe at 124 Behrens.

* Judy and Ray Grinter at 217 East Lake Drive.

* Lewis and Clark Community College's N.O. Nelson Campus at 600 Troy Road.