Garden Tour Highlights a Southampton Oasis

Late spring is a beautiful time to visit a garden.

The Gardeners of Crooked Billet held their annual garden tour this Saturday, opening five gardens in Hatboro, Horsham and Southampton. All proceeds from the tour will benefit a Hatboro-Horsham High School scholarship fund.

The Nguyen garden in Horsham featured everything anyone (gardeners and non-gardeners) would ever hope to see in one garden. The front yard was filled with dozens of colorful roses. Visitors also saw a mini-vineyard, fruit trees, vegetable garden, bonsai garden and koi pond — all breathtaking.

Two swans greeted visitors at the backyard lake. If the tour had been a bit earlier in the year, visitors would have seen nearly two dozen cherry trees in blossom around the lake.

Luong Nguyen takes care of this garden himself and it is clearly a labor of love. When he bought the property eight years ago, not much was there, he said.

Nguyen had to reduce the size of a huge vegetable garden there and improve the soil over the years. His vegetable garden now includes an array of oriental spinach, Chinese cabbage, tomatoes, hot peppers, bitter melon and other interesting vegetables that he enjoys cooking with.

Nguyen likes his roses. From the road, you can see dozens of roses that straddle the white fence. Nguyen isn't too picky. He likes hedge roses, hybrid teas, English roses and climbing roses.

For inspiration, Nguyen visits Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square every year to take in new ideas for his own garden.

Barbara Rosenzweig of Southampton landscapes with both shade-loving and sun-loving perennials. The highlights this time of year are iris, peonies, deutzia, clematis, yellow sundrops, roses and lilies. Rosenzweig, a watercolor artist, plants her garden with vignettes in mind. The flowers in her garden inspire her botanical paintings.

Over the years, she has transitioned her garden from vegetables and annuals, with some perennials, to all perennials. The perennials happily spread in her garden each year and help crowd out the weeds.

Some of her favorite plants include Knock Out roses because they are a low maintenance rose (no spraying involved) and hellebores.

Her advice: plant perennials and groundcover densely to keep the weeds at bay.

The old-fashioned garden of the Kraskes of Horsham features a welcoming cottage-like entrance. The garden is filled with foxgloves, daylilies, hydrangeas, coneflowers and roses. There is a nice brick path curving around roses, crepe myrtles, butterfly bushes and oak leaf hydrangea. Knock-Out roses light up the back patio area.

In Horsham, the Brown garden's front yard features a spellbinding array of evening primrose. The yellow and pink combination is a showstopper. The backyard features a relaxing area and a beautiful Southern magnolia tree.

The Ford Garden on York Road in Hatboro is an enigma. If you didn't know there was a ‘secret garden’ out back, you would just keep driving past this chiropractic office.

However, if you are attentive, you will notice iris, blue flax and orange poppy in a small patch out front. Once you open the back gate, you will be happily surprised to see the vivid blue waters from the pool and a variety of yellow flowers, including primrose and hibiscus bushes.

Some of the features include clematis happily climbing up a huge arbor, numerous roses in a variety of colors and meticulously planted planters in all shapes and sizes. Anyone that swings open the back gate would instantly feel happier. It makes one wonder if horticultural therapy is on the menu at this doctor's office.