While many homes and gardens across the county suffered minor to severe damage, the El Campo Garden Club recognized Lucy Buzek with its Garden of the Month award for a beautiful garden and a home that escaped the disaster.
Buzek has lived at 2105 Kirby for more than 26 years and said she was thrilled to receive the honor. Garden club members Melanie Wiesner, Diane Berger and Nancy Porter selected Buzek’s garden for the honor.
“I love my garden and I love that other people love it too,” Buzek says.
The home is surrounded by large oak trees and features plenty of garden art, including benches, wire tea carts, flower pots and a fountain. Buzek added a patio/sunroom at the back of the house, which is his favorite room in the house.
Not only are the garden’s flower beds lush with vibrant flowers and foliage, Buzek has also decorated the yard with plenty of blue items and garden art, including bottle trees, made from iron bars with “branches” welded to them, decorated with dozens of blue bottles and planted throughout the yard.
“Blue is my favorite color, so I love decorating with blue,” Buzek said.
As the recent hurricane approached, neighbors Phil and Theresa Schmidt helped Buzek prepare, including bringing boxes to pack up her more than 100 blue bottles.
Buzek and her neighbors had evacuated any potentially airborne objects to their glass-enclosed sunroom before the storm hit, so she’s thankful nothing hit the house, its outbuildings, or its buildings.
“I have a lot of colorful plants in my garden, especially in my backyard. I have several blue bottle plants of various sizes, but aesthetically I like this blue the best and it makes all the flowers pop,” Buzek says.
Buzek has several plants that were given to her by her husband after his death, and she said one of her favorites is a croton that looks beautiful in the summer and fall.
“This year we planted some plants in the cottage garden,” Buzek said.
She collected roses, sunflowers, angelonias and other plants and planted them in the middle of an old ladder. Large wooden barrels, laundry tubs and birdcages create different levels in the landscape, and old-fashioned colors mix with formerly useful items. There’s even a blue-painted high chair that says “Lucy’s Garden.”
Every spring, Buzek plants seasonal plants such as orange crossandra, dragon wing begonia, mystic spire blue salvia, verbena and potato vine.
Future plans for the award-winning garden include a patriotic garden with red, white and blue flowers, blue pots and several flags.
“My advice to successful gardening is to do it over the long term,” Buzek says, “and then every spring after work I rush home and plant.”
Buzek sees listening to audiobooks on his phone while walking through his garden as a pleasure, not a job.
“I feel a tremendous sense of peace,” Buzek said.
Buzek gets help from Gustavo Zamora of DSG Nursery, who has been mowing and edging the plot every two weeks since 2011.
Now that the storm has passed, all the bluebottles have returned to their bottle trees, the garden is full of plants and flowers, and is visited occasionally by a four-year-old cat named Piper.
