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See What Grows

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If Andi and Sandy Wardlaw were to give you directions to their house, they could easily say, “When you’ve reached Eden, you’re here.”

Their house is positioned at the end of a cul-de-sac, and where their yard ends, Southwest Park begins. (This means no fighting traffic for the 4th of July fireworks show.) The Wardlaws moved to the neighborhood more than a decade ago, so the fruit of their labor is the result of experimentation, master gardener wisdom and a lot of patience.

“This has been a 13-year project,” says Sandy. “But we started out just like everyone else.”

In fact, Andi started out with a little plot of garden space when she moved to a ground-floor apartment in Amarillo in 1977. Originally from Mexico, she moved with her family at five years old to a little town outside Tucumcari, New Mexico. Even on the dry, parched land of her parents’ ranch, her family kept a modest garden. The seed, as she puts it, was sewn early.

After marrying Sandy in 1979, Andi moved into her house which had a yard, enabling her to plant a larger garden. However, once their boys, James, 23, and Joseph, 17, came along, gardening took a back seat as most hobbies tend to do when parenting and family needs become priority. But the boys grew older and Sandy retired from a long career with the Fire Department. When the Wardlaw family moved into their current home, their interest and time for gardening grew.

“We started out with just the patio and have added a little more each year,” says Andi. “When we first moved here, we were just excited to have grass and a sprinkler system. But every year we take out more grass. It’s very hard to take care of.”

You could easily spend an entire afternoon in the front yard, lounging under the pergola watching the Koi fish casually swim in the neighboring 40-inch-deep pond. Their newest feature is a winding gravel path connecting the front and back yards, lined with hostas, golden sedum, creeping Jenny and stone. Yet, it’s the Boston ivy that covers the brick façade of the house that immediately tells newcomers they’ve arrived at the home of a green thumb.

“In 2004 I joined the Randall master gardener’s program,” says Andi. “It’s a way to learn from other gardeners and share with the community. I just enjoy it so much.”

Partly to her credit is the Japanese Meditation Garden at the Botanical Gardens, a project and design she oversaw, as well as the Edible Landscape currently in progress. As a master gardener, she is required to spend a minimum of 50 hours per year in community service, something that is easily achieved as this has become her full-time passion. In addition to the physical labor, Andi performs speaking engagements and instructs others how to build and maintain their own gardens.

The Botanical Gardens also serve as a retreat for Andi during the late fall and winter months, when her garden beds are bare and the ivy has withered leaving a brown, vein-like remnant of spring and summer.

“I don’t like winter,” she laughs. “It’s so desolate. The only things that don’t die are the evergreens. I’m one of those people who need sun, so I go to the Botanical Gardens or work on my gourds. I dread the first day of winter.”

Along with her master gardener status, Andi is also known for her freehand-carved gourds, a wintertime hobby that became a creative outlet for her and provides a little income now and then. The process of drying, carving and painting gourds takes upwards of a year and all of them are for sale.

In the backyard, which is as much of an oasis as the front, grape vines, petunias and a myriad of other plants thrive in the fickle Amarillo soil. The secret, say the Wardlaws, is in the amendments.

“Nature isn’t good to us here so you’re lucky to achieve what you can, especially with the soil,” says Andi. “You have to amend it with compost, cow and horse manure, and lately we’ve been using expanded shale. Do the soil work first, because if you don’t, everything will die.”

After cutting away the pesky grass, the Wardlaws till the clay ground, lay down wet newspaper, build up the beds with rich soil and compost, and plant their seedlings a good foot above ground level. They suggest starting small as a means to familiarize yourself with your own soil and reconcile what grows and what doesn’t.

“Sometimes things just won’t grow here and that happens to everyone,” says Sandy. “And sometimes what does well in my yard won’t do well in others. You just need experience to figure it out.”

Getting the experience, for this couple, is part of the fun. There’s never a plant they won’t try. In fact, Andi has her eye on a kiwi plant.

“I don’t know,” she laughs. “I heard they grow well here. So we’ll see.”

Andi’s handy-work isn’t restricted to her own yard or the Botanical Gardens. Together with other master gardeners, she helped put together a handful of beds at The Children’s Home, specifically for house parents Doug and Sue Vermeulen. While the vegetable gardens at 34th and Bowie are a community service hot spot for area master gardeners to get in their required hours, they mostly serve as educational and bonding opportunities for the Vermeulens and their kids.

“It used to be mandatory to have a garden, at least that’s how it was when we first got here. And so I thought if we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it right,” says Doug.

Though it’s no longer required for house parents to keep a garden, the Vermeulens see no reason not to. In fact, with each season, their crops just keep growing.

Married in 1977, Doug and Sue moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, so Doug could attend Reformed Bible College. Upon graduating, the couple went to their first post at a halfway house for women re-entering society after prison. Their role was to reintegrate the women with their children, and from that experience the Vermeulens learned that many of these children were without foster homes.

With a heart for kids and unmatched patience, the two began Daybreak Ranch in Rockford, Michigan, a home on a 20-acre plot of land for a specialized group of boys who couldn’t get into foster care. By this time, Doug and Sue had their own two children, Jason and Joshua, so with the six foster kids, the ranch was a full-time instructional haven. They gardened, raised horses, pigs and llamas, worked on cars and gave young boys a loving place to run, learn and grow.

When the last foster child left Daybreak Ranch, Doug and Sue agreed to take a few years off and focus on home construction as an alternate career. However, their passion for children persisted and soon the Vermeulens relocated to New Mexico on a 60,000-acre boys and girls ranch where they were responsible for 10 boys and more than 400 heads of cattle. However, in 2001, only a year into the program, the president of the ranch decided to close it and the Vermeulens moved to Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch. Looking for a more hands-on experience, Doug and Sue finally landed at The Children’s Home in Amarillo in June 2003, where they parent children from ages five to 10 in a group home according to the Family Teaching Model. With them, they brought their horticulture experience and passion for learning. Gardening was on the top of their list of lessons to teach.

“It was way different to grow something in Michigan,” laughs Doug. “You’d just put it in the ground and watch it grow. Here we had to learn about mulching and soil and watering, what grows, what doesn’t. All of it. The master gardeners came here faithfully to help us.”

Leo Reed was one who helped them get started. He would show up at random times on differing days with truckloads of mulch. He’d test the soil and advise Doug and Sue on how to treat it.

“In March we had three gardeners help us figure out where to plant things and put everything on raised beds. Those master gardeners are so funny. ‘Lay down exactly three to five sheets of wet newspaper,’ they said,” Doug laughs.

“Yeah, but we’ve had so few weeds than we’ve ever had,” adds Sue.

From tomatoes and zucchini to pumpkins and corn, the Vermeulens and their kids raise quite a crop. And everyone does their share of the labor.

“Last year we had a different group of kids and they just loved it. We had a little five- year-old girl who’d sing while she weeded,” says Doug. “This year the kids weren’t thrilled about gardening when nothing was coming up, but now they’re so excited.”

With their bounty, the children learn the obvious lessons of how plants grow and require proper care, but the lessons continue inside. Fresh vegetables make their way into nearly every meal, and many little hands help to prepare them. They show their vegetables at the Tri-State Fair each year, as well as their leather crafts and woodworking projects. Last year, the kids won a combined 46 ribbons, which are on display in the hallway at their house.

“We had so many pumpkins that we had a pumpkin sale. We decided that we’d use our earnings and go on a trip. We made $330 and went to Carlsbad Caverns,” says Doug. “That may not sound like a big deal, but to stay in a hotel was a really big deal to the kids.”

Together, Doug and Sue have raised more than 400 children, and to put it plainly, they just do the best they can with them.

“Everything is about learning, and gardening is the best illustration of life,” says Doug. “These kids always think they’re going somewhere else. They don’t put down roots, so gardening touches their biggest problems.”

by Jennie Treadway-Miller

Jennie was a columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press for eight years prior to moving to Amarillo in 2008. She is an avid reader, runner and writer.