A West Philadelphia garden patiently sown over time from seeds and cuttings

Gold forsythia edge the Wynnefield lot in early spring, followed by multicolored tulips and yellow daffodils that brighten the rock garden and flower beds around the two-story home.

By Mother’s Day, pink azaleas, blue phlox and purple-flowered, yellow-leafed spirea are the show-offs. In June, tall lilies take a starring role. Homeowner Sonja Bond especially likes the fragrant white ones.

Sonja grows most plants from seeds and cuttings. Years ago, she propagated the elegant Japanese maple in the front yard from winged seeds fallen from her next door neighbor’s tree.

Not everything flourishes. “Gardening,” she said, “is trial and error.”

When the Bonds moved to their newly constructed home in 1988, the quarter-acre lot “was nothing but dirt,” Sonja’s husband, Ron, recalled. “The builder was just going to throw down some grass seed.”

Instead, he consulted a landscaper at University of Pennsylvania, where Ron had been director of the Recreation Department. With the landscaper’s advice and help from friends and family, the Bonds laid out a rock garden, sodded the yard, and planted 1,500 plugs of English ivy on the slope in front of the house.

“We had beer and hoagie parties,” Sonja said.

Sonja considers gardening an outlet for her creativity. “I’m a crafter. I sew, knit and crochet,” she said. “Gardening is another way to express myself.”

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Her artistry is evident in the arrangement of white and purple petunias and pink geraniums in a blue-and-white planter on the patio table and in pots by the front door.

Ron mows the velvet green lawn, and recently he cut down an overgrown oak tree in the backyard. The couple feared that a fierce wind might topple it onto the house.

The Bonds also customized the interior of their home. A patio door and window in the back were switched so the door would be near the kitchen. Other windows were relocated, and rooms reconfigured.

“We built the house around our furniture,” Ron said.

Instead of a basement laundry, space was found for the washer and dryer on the first floor. Upstairs in their bedroom, a closet was shortened to add a nook for Sonja’s dressing table.

The second floor also has a guest room and two bathrooms, as well as an office for Ron and a sewing room/office for Sonja.

Sonja’s garden brightens the house year-round through Ron’s photos of her blossoms decorating the pumpkin-colored walls of the powder room. More flower photos share wall space in the dining room with a watercolor of pink roses by artist Van Buren Payne, who grew up in Chester, Ron’s hometown.

In a dining room corner is an assemblage of interesting brown and beige pots made by potter Regis Brodie, who was born and educated in Pennsylvania. The Bonds purchased the smallest pot from Brodie, and when he said he was discarding the others, they took them, too.

Two prints of young men in the living room are by Nigerian American artist Imo Nse Imeh. His portrait of a young woman wearing a fantastical headdress hangs over the fireplace. Nearby is a portrait of an older woman ironing billows of fabric by the late West Philadelphia artist Eleanor Powell Tiberino.

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The Bonds, who have been married since 1962, met at Temple University. He was living with his aunt in West Philadelphia, and she was living with her parents a few blocks away.

“Sonja was economically available,” Ron joked. “I didn’t have money for movies or dinner, so we would sit on the glider on the porch and talk.”

Both are now retired. Before he was at Penn, Ron was a physical education teacher in Philadelphia public schools and later, for eight years, he was the city’s deputy recreation commissioner. For more than 30 years, Sonja was an administrator at Philadelphia Corporation for Aging.

The couple’s son and daughter and their six grandchildren love visiting the Wynnefield home. “On Mother’s Day, we played football in the back yard,” Ron said.

The Bonds, both 82, are not ready to downsize. The kitchen was remodeled several years ago with new maple cabinets, and work on an expanded patio is nearly complete.

“If need be,” Ron said, “the powder room has room for a shower stall,”

Sonja added: ”I still want to garden.”

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