2025 OPEN DAYS AND DIGGING DEEPER GARDEN TOURS

 The Mediterranean style home, built in 1926, is located in the  highest part of the Washington Highlands neighborhood, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.  The home itself, also on the National Register, is a pastiche of many Mediterranean influences.  Like many Mediterranean gardens, it has two water features, a traditional wall fountain and a small pond edged with a cascading Lannon stone wall.  Over the years the owners have redesigned and replanted many of the gardens, including adding the stone walkway and terraced wall garden in the backyard reflecting their love of the naturalized plants, which reseed and thrive in the background.  The backyard is an oasis of secluded privacy just beyond the highways and byways of urban living. Visit and enjoy the creative plantings and subtle screening from the world around as you traverse the yard and take in the beauty. 

The owners moved to their home in 1979 and since then have completely transformed the gardens by cultivating a great variety of plants.  The front yard features shrubbery, a white ash clump, and a star magnolia. Porch pots with red and yellow Iresine, geraniums, sweet potato vine, and morning glories add color. The small cul-de-sac garden is planted with roses, canna lilies, and datura.  The small north yard has lilacs, mock orange bushes, more than a dozen varieties of daylilies, and a lawn edged with hosta.  Entrance to the south yard is lined with ‘Annabelle’ hydrangeas, which continue through an area shaded by the Chinese elms and maple trees underplanted with hellebores, oakleaf hydrangea, hosta, a Sargent crabapple tree, maidenhair ferns, European ginger, and a climbing hydrangea.  The garden beyond is planted with lilies, irises, over 30 varieties of hosta and daylilies, as well as rhododendrons around a two-level deck.  Come and be amazed.

 While Ann and her husband loved the historic home they purchased in the Washington Highlands in 1987, the outdoor space amounted to a small, steep hill in the backyard.  You will be enchanted to see how this space has evolved.  First, the backyard hillside was terraced into three levels and grass was planted.  Over the next 18 years Ann discovered she was a plant collector at heart.  If "variety is the spice of life," you'd have to call this a spicy garden.  At the last count, it included over 30 varieties of trees and shrubs, and over 100 different ground covers and perennials.  The only two plants remaining from the original garden are a huge basswood and an ancient privet hedge. More recently, Ann’s focus has turned to replacing some perennials with native plants to support birds and butterflies; the garden is now a certified wildlife habitat. Lots of variety makes this a rather high maintenance garden, but it is a labor of love as well as a benefit to mental and physical health.  Since retiring, Ann has discovered a new passion—ART! Now a docent at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Ann has combined both collecting and creating art with her love of gardening.  She especially enjoys using natural materials and displays them throughout the garden. 

When the owners moved into their home in 1979, the gardens were not the main attraction: the small lot at the bottom of a steep hill provided nothing but a mowing challenge.  The real transformation started when the owners had the opportunity to purchase the lot behind their property in 1984.  Connecting the original space to the new top-of-the-hill addition led to the construction of numerous Lannon stone terraces, paths and stairs that transformed the yard into something that presented many opportunities for gardening.  According to the owners, they have never had a “grand plan,” but rather let the gardens develop serendipitously—one small area at a time. The lower level has new street-facing foundation plantings of holly and dwarf mugo pines; rose bed and perennial gardens are on the south side of the house. Colorful perennials at the base of a stone wall separate the two landscaping levels.  On the upper level, you walk into a relaxing open space punctuated by a large black walnut tree, a stalwart shade-providing Norway maple, and in-ground pool.  Surrounding the grassy yard is a mixture of redbud, kousa dogwood, birch, and serviceberry trees along with hosta, ferns, and ligularia. daffodils, lilacs, and forsythia provide cheerful color in the spring, with fairy candles (Actaea racemosa) taking over in the summer and hardy hibiscus and monkshood in the fall.