St. Matthews Tudor-style home part of 2022 Kilgore Home & Garden Tour

Some individuals get into increasing or gardening simply because of a particular kind of plant, these kinds of as roses or orchids. Others are drawn to the pastime as a calming, meditative practice. For Bob Bobrow, the undertaking began 18 decades ago as a way to entice hummingbirds into his St. Matthews backyard.

Starting modest

“The garden began small in 2004 and slowly grew to fill our overall ton,” Bobrow explained to The Courier Journal. “Every growth was prompted by discovering a new plant or plant sort that we required to include in the backyard garden or a motivation to bring in wildlife — hummingbirds, goldfinch, butterflies, and dragonflies, for illustration.”

Now, the immaculate back garden contains everything from standard flora which include daylilies, irises, peonies, hostas, and roses, to fewer-popular crops this sort of as crossvine, lady slippers, spigelia marilandica, toad lilies, Turk’s cap lilies, Canada lilies, cup plants, and a wide variety of peonies. The room also offers a sizeable assortment of massive rocks, as nicely as 20 varieties of Japanese maple.

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A tree starting

“(I) received begun … on the Japanese maple kick when I was about 9 or 10 decades aged,” Bobrow described. “My uncle … had an orchard and … some decorative trees, and I remember him having me out one day and displaying me this tree that experienced crimson leaves. In 1969 … they weren’t that common around in this article.”

Decades later, Bobrow and his brothers inherited the land — and he remembered the tree. With a good deal of effort and many assisting palms, he was in a position to transfer the maple to his front yard, where by it however sits to this working day.

Other things of the back garden are also Japanese-impressed, which includes the tiny koi pond, as perfectly as the birdbath established on the side of the driveway.

“The birdbath is wabi-sabi design and style,” Bobrow explained. “The thought (is that) that you never want one thing ideal. You just want a all-natural seem.”

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Itoh peonies — hybrids from a tree peony bred with an herbaceous peony, established by Japanese horticulturist Dr. Toichi Itoh — are sprinkled in the course of.

“I like peonies,” Bobrow exclaimed. “You can not genuinely get substantially prettier than that. … The (Itoh peonies) have a yellow solid to them standard peonies don’t … and there’s a good deal far more coloration variation to them.”

Preferred florals

Bobrow’s yard boasts a plethora of crops, but he suggests his favorites are the Canada lilies, which are indigenous to North America.

“It’s a actually rather plant,” he mentioned. “It’ll get (a few to eight feet) tall, then (the) blooms will splay and fall above, and they hold considerably like the blooms of the columbine.”

He’s also fond of the numerous peonies he has planted, together with the Itohs. But when it comes to the best part of the backyard garden alone, Bobrow suggests it is a mix of having the completed room and the act of placing in the function to produce it.

“Every evening, if it is good, we’re sitting out listed here,” he stated, introducing that in the mornings, he’ll be seated on the reverse finish. Numerous chairs and benches are spread during so that the views from all angles can be savored in different means, relying on in which the sunlight hits at any distinct time of day. 

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“In the conclusion, which is the most enjoyable portion,” he mentioned. “But a thing about performing it all you helps make it extra pleasurable. … I assume any individual who is a genuine gardener has a really robust handle impulse, (mainly because) you are making your very own entire world.”

Bobrow’s garden is one of seven that are being showcased in the 2022 Kilgore Property & Backyard garden Tour.