June 13, 2006 in Home

Garden of the Month

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For Cathi Lamoreux, gardening is the oil that keeps her hectic life moving. In the garden she can recharge her batteries, be creative and connect with the outdoor world. That describes the connection between her hectic life as a speech pathologist and the time she spends with her hands in the dirt.

Her South Hill garden is a riot of color and texture from early spring and well into the fall every year. It literally stops traffic, walkers and cars alike.

“I can see people from my computer and I see people stopping to examine a flower all the time. They will stand here for 10 minutes looking,” says Lamoreux.

On a recent Sunday it stopped the judges for the Inland Empire Gardeners Garden of the Month contest in their tracks and earned her the May Garden of the Month award.

Lamoreux and her husband Dave Lipton have been working on the garden since 1998 and have revised it several times.

The gardens sweep around the house in a series of perennial borders. The south-facing front street garden is a mix of plants that can take the heat and dry of asphalt and baking sun. A few feet away is the cool woodland garden where hostas and epimedium reign supreme. A pot of Japanese forest grass on a pedestal glows in the early evening sun.

The front walk is flanked by drifts of lavender and a multitude of perennials. A large Darlow’s Enigma rose dwarfs an arbor near the door. It is covered with fragrant white flowers all summer long. A basalt column water feature adds a bit of sound and movement as you come to the door.

There is an almost seamless transition from the front gardens to the borders in the backyard. Here Lamoreux has her potting shed and raised bed vegetable garden. Bits of folk art are tucked into the garden and hang on the fence.

She knows first hand the power a plant has to heal and shares it in her work with older people.

“Research has shown that we have a connection to nature and so much of our lives is overriding our instincts. We aren’t as in tune with the earth anymore,” says Lamoreux.

In her garden, nature will always rule.

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