Thriving in year-round color

The panorama of purple blossoms is breathtaking.

Every spring, a plethora of rhododendron bloom on the steep slope above a curbside creek in Berwyn.

The stunning vista of blooming shrubs intermingled with tall trees, ferns, and flourishing ground cover was created with effort and ingenuity by Bonnie and Bob Dettore, who live in the Colonial-revival split-level at the top of the slope.

When the Dettores purchased the property in 1987, the landscape consisted of old-growth trees and bare ground. “The house was dark and damp all the time,” Bonnie said. “There was no sun,” echoed Bob.

The property did have a strong selling point though. It was in the highly regarded Tredyffrin/Easttown School District. The couple had a young daughter, and Bonnie was pregnant with their son.

The house, built in 1960 on a little less than an acre, had seven previous owners who apparently were not interested in gardening or home renovations.

So Bob, a civil engineer, got to work. He had about 30 trees cut down, terraced the front yard and planted the front, side, and backyard with perennials, shrubs, and new trees including flowering redbuds, ironwoods, Magnolia, dogwoods and American paw paws, which produce delicate, tasty fruit.

He created seating areas around the house and an awning-shaded patio in back festooned with pots of petunias, coleus, ferns, begonias, and yellow straw flowers. In 2001, he created an arbor of white hydrangeas on a front terrace for his daughter’s wedding.

Inside the four-bedroom, 2½-bath house, Bob said, “there is not a surface that hasn’t been rebuilt.” Every window looks out on lush greenery. A blue flag with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania seal hangs from the front porch.

Bob also installed the geothermal heating and cooling system, doing all the work himself except the well drilling.

Bonnie credits Bob with being the gardener, but “I do like to weed,” she added. After a career as a nurse and clinical trial manager for pharmaceutical companies, she is learning horticulture as a volunteer at the Jenkins Arboretum in Devon. Bob says he’s learned “by trial and error.”

While rhododendron show off in May, the garden is colorful year-round, with yellow witch hazel in late fall and winter, then camellias and pink, white, and black Helleborus (Lenten roses), followed by spring bulbs and viburnum, azalea, and Fothergilla, and later roses, butterfly bushes, and asters.

In the late spring, “candy corn” spirea display both red and yellow flowers as does the “piñata” rose bush trellised up the garden shed. Crimson weigela attract hummingbirds. An Austrian pine and a hemlock add texture and height.

Stumps from large oak trees, which Bob cut down, are covered with plump beige mushrooms, “a sign of a healthy environment,” he said.

Another alteration thanks to Bob was the relocation of a telephone pole that was abutting the patio. He didn’t move it himself, of course, but he did argue with the phone company about it for several years before they agreed to move it.

Aside from its living features, the garden is adorned with yellow, red, and blue Japanese lanterns; a metal whirligig; a stone birdbath; and a statue of St. Francis of Assisi nestled in hostas.

Bob was taught by Franciscan priests at Archbishop Ryan High School in Northeast Philadelphia. Both he and Bonnie grew up in the Northeast and attended Ryan at the same time. But they did not meet in class because boys’ and girls’ were taught on separate sides of the chapel, Bonnie said. Instead they met as sophomores at a school dance. They married in 1978.

The couple cultivates lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, spinach, parsley, basil, and rosemary in a mesh “hoop house” to keep out rabbits, squirrels, and deer. The latter were particularly voracious. Bob has a stack of receipts for deer-resistant plants they devoured.

The deer were so destructive, the Dettores four years ago erected a 6-foot fence around the property with a gate across the driveway. “It was either put up a fence,” Bob said, “or sell the house.” Recently he has found success using lamb fat to deter deer in areas outside the fence.

Having solved the marauding deer problem and installed an automatic sprinkler system, the retired couple are looking forward to vacationing in Italy this summer and returning to a thriving garden.

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