Calusa Garden Club hold successful Home Garden Tour
Calusa Garden Club of Marco Island’s Third Annual Home Garden Tour on March 21 was a sellout with 64 ticket purchasers.
As in past years, the Home Garden Tour featured four Marco Island home gardens, and the homeowners personally conducted the tours of small groups of eight ticketholders. The four home gardeners who showed their landscapes in 2024 are Linda Colombo, Rhonda McAuliffe- Gloodt, Charlette Roman, plus Ron and Jane Patterson who were assisted by garden club member Sue Oldershaw.
Rhonda Gloodt, a member of Calusa Garden Club, described how her decision to provide habitat for the endangered Monarch Butterfly led her to plant host plants and nectar plants for many other varieties of butterflies.
Gloodt provided the guests with an informative leaflet designed by her daughter, Jane McAuliffe, showing Florida butterflies and matching them with their host and nectar plants. From frogfruit to popcorn cassia to maypop vine to pipevine to thistle, and even parsley and rosemary, Rhonda described the plants that nourish or provide egg-laying territory for butterflies, and identified the appropriate butterfly. She also displayed beautiful orchids mounted in a Royal Poinciana tree with its bed edged by ancient giant whelk shells she had unearthed in her yard. Rhonda is pictured with one of the tour groups in front of the Royal Poinciana tree. Another photo shows Rhonda pointing out a Panama rose plant and a wild thistle plant with a plumeria tree behind her.
Linda Colombo met her tour groups on the sidewalk so that she could show them her swale filled with perennial peanut, a groundcover that has pretty yellow flowers, and also several “volunteer” milkweed plants which, like all aware gardeners, she does not weed out because they are the host plant for the Monarch Butterfly.
Colombo uses no irrigation in her yard that is filled with colorful native and Florida friendly plants and trees, with white fossil shell walks and a pretty arch dividing her garden areas. The highlights of the front yard include blooming beach sunflower, Aechmea blanchettiana, necklace pod and cathedral bells kalanchoe.
Several of her bromeliads were showing tall flower spikes in multiple bright colors like vibrant deep blue and bubble gum pink. In addition to a Geiger tree, buttonwood tree, white birds of paradise, giant milkweed, and seagrape trees, Linda has a showstopper Dutchman’s pipevine that she displays on a backyard trellis.
Charlette Roman’s large lot allowed her to plant over 50 trees in her landscape, all of which are native trees or Florida friendly trees, including a live oak, Geiger, cabbage palms, other palms, screw pine, plumeria, pink powderpuff, maho, as well as mango and avocado fruit trees. Charlette’s overall theory of landscape design is to provide a ribbon of grass that winds among her planting beds.
The front planting areas include a tabebuia tree that was just starting to bud its bright yellow flowers, and beds of colorful bougainvillea and beach daisy backed by a grouping of thatch palms.
In most of the trees, especially the ones placed for landscape design purposes, Charlette has mounted colorful blooming bromeliads of many varieties, and a large number of orchids. Charlette described every plant and orchid, including her first vanilla orchid and a newer vanilla orchid of a different variety. Beautiful vignettes of plantings captivated the guests. Charlette is pictured in the green shirt, pointing out to the tour group the orchid collection on her lanai, and she is backed by the grove of trees she planted. Note the many bromeliads and orchids mounted in the palms. Another photo shows a tour group with Charlette on the right, ready to begin the tour.
The home of Ron and Jane Peterson was modeled on a tropical West Indies manor house, with front balconies and gables. They continued the West Indies theme by lining the front walk with banana trees. Beautiful tall Sylvester palm trees surrounded by yellow flowering allamanda shrubs added to the curb appeal of the landscape. Color was everywhere, from bleeding heart vines surrounding the garage and framing the Victorian conservatory patio to dark red ti plants behind Dracaena song of India and in front of walls covered with faux ivy. The Victorian conservatory patio with a tiled fireplace was lushly landscaped with tree ferns, pothos, bromeliads, and poinsettias in pots in planting boxes.
A tour group is pictured in front of the fireplace with Ron Peterson and Sue Oldershaw, Calusa Garden Club member who assisted the Petersons with the tour. Another photo shows the front entryway to the Peterson home with banana trees framing the walk.
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Calusa Garden Club of Marco Island is an IRC Section 501(c)3 organization and is a member of the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs. Membership is open to persons interested in horticulture, floral design and environmental matters residing five months or more in Collier County. The Club meets the second Monday of each month, October through April at Rose Hall at Marco Island library. Persons interested in membership should contact the Garden Club through its website, calusa.org. For information on Club activities, visit the Club’s Facebook page Calusa Garden Club.