Autumn in Bloom

A pumpkin patch in Grandma’s front yard? Why, it’s the stuff that storybooks are made of. Pam Reynolds never dreamed she would lay claim to that kind of “grandma” fame when she moved into her stucco, Mediterranean-style Webster Groves home five and a half years ago.

The front yard landscaping included mature oak trees, a landscaped berm and a charming patio adjacent to the front entrance. The backyard featured numerous hosta, a mature stand of graceful maiden grass and a huge crape myrtle. It also came with drainage problems.

“I spent two years bringing in dirt,” recalls Pam, who had renovated gardens at previous homes in Brentwood and University City. Her son-in-law Dennis Koscielski, husband of her daughter Stephanie, helped to install an underground drainage system while Pam worked on the creation of a dry creek bed that would absorb the water runoff during heavy rainstorms.

Pam also found a supporter and friend in next-door neighbor and fellow gardener Janelle Criscione, who had a beautiful garden surrounding her home. To tie in with her neighbor’s planting, Pam removed a fence that hid the stone wall lining Janelle’s yard, and the two women teamed up to create garden-uniting steps at the back of both yards. Their efforts were so successful that the Missouri Botanical Garden featured both landscapes on the organization’s 2008 garden tour.

Retired from a career in sales management with IBM, Pam currently works part-time as director of marketing and communications for the YouthBridge Community Foundation.  She began gardening seriously at age 45 and expanded her knowledge by taking classes at the Botanical Garden and “asking a lot of questions.” 

Initially, she worked with the plants she had inherited when she purchased her home. “I dug up so many hosta and planted them in different spots,” she said with a laugh. Later, she augmented what was already in the yard, adding azaleas, rhododendrons, more crape myrtles, hydrangeas, a line of mature arborvitae, lush red Knock Out roses, daisies and seasonal annuals. She also tucked in an herb garden. Pam does most of the work herself. 

“It's a stress reliever, and it's also good exercise,” she says with a smile.

To give structure to the planting, Pam installed a scalloped, white picket fence at the rear of the garden and added an arbor near the house to tie the two parts of the yard together. Throughout the backyard and along the sides of her home, Pam scattered low, wrought-iron fences and chairs to mark pathways and provide an inviting place to sit and view the surroundings.

“I try to plant what I like,” she says pragmatically. “If it doesn't look right or do well, I can always move it.”

When she began her garden, Pam wasn't thinking of fall color. But it is there in all its glory, provided by luscious red-leaved dogwoods, red and gold hydrangeas with their decorative dried blossoms, gold-leaved hosta and plumed grasses. The vibrant red orange of her crape myrtles against the white of the picket fence was a happy surprise. “I planted them for their summer blossoms. I had no idea the fall color would be so beautiful,” she says with a smile.

The creation of her front yard “pumpkin patch” was no accident. Each year her granddaughters Caitlyn, now 6, and Emma, 5, have delighted in helping their grandmother turn the berm into an autumn delight by tucking numerous pumpkins in among the rich green and gold of the fall hosta leaves. “When it's time for Halloween, we add spooky decorations like a skeleton,” Pam explains. “When Halloween is over, I take away those things and leave the pumpkins until Thanksgiving.”

In true storybook fashion, the pumpkins were so happy in the soil of Pam's garden, seeds that escaped as the pumpkins deteriorated have taken root. “I now have a pumpkin vine that stretches out onto the lawn and three pumpkins that are turning orange,” she says with delight. “I love decorating, and this is truly outside decorating.”