Gardens to be showcased in Mt. Lebanon
Whether one has a green thumb or not, there is something for everyone during the 34th annual Mt. Lebanon Garden Tour, to be held from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, June 23.
The event, which features seven private plots, promotes the public library, and that makes Kathryn Cashman a willing participant to showcase her home in Virginia Manor.
“When they told me that they usually sell about 500 tickets, I was shocked,” Cashman said. “So, I am nervous. I can do one person at a time, but 500 over five hours? That will be a challenge
“But if it helps the library, that’s the whole reason for doing this because I am just not a very public person. I am absolutely sure of that. I like my privacy.”
Though she is more gregarious, Natalie Drozda is also apprehensive about showcasing her yard in the Seminole Hills section of the municipality, but for different reasons.
“I’m nervous yet excited,” she said. “Most people have a different aesthetic than (my garden).”
Drozda’s plot features plenty of native plants and wild grasses. There is snakeroot, showy goldenrod, lupine, swamp milkweed, butterfly weed, flowering tobacco, false indigo, beardtongue, coneflower and spider flower. There is also a bit of salvia, iris, hydrangea and rose campion, which she intends to eradicate.
Once Drozda affixes all the identification tags to the species, she said, “I hope people won’t think it’s all weeds and overgrown.”
She added that her gardening philosophy is cultivating an ecosystem more than curating a plant collection.
“I don’t like spaces between things because you don’t see that anywhere. It’s not real,” Drozda said. “It pretends that herbaceous plants don’t exist.” She added that you “never see a natural place” that is mulched and well-manicured.
A Mt. Lebanon native, Drozda started gardening as a kid when she lived not too far from her current home. She grew orchids with her father, Steve, and together they belonged to the Orchid Society. She also tilled a strip of land between the retaining wall and the neighbor’s driveway, growing irises and strawberries. The iris collection fared well but the chipmunks devoured the fruit.
“I never had them again,” she said with a laugh.
She never pursued her dream of becoming a doctor either.
Drozda had an interest in science and weaving while attending Mt. Lebanon High School, but entered Penn State University undeclared regarding a major.
Although she had a “fantastic professor,” Drozda said she had a “bad run of chemistry,” making her medical quest impossible. Someone recommended landscape architecture as an easy A, so Drozda put together the required portfolio, which included her original art, pottery and paintings. She was accepted into the program.
“Yes,” she admitted. “It was an easy A, but because it was interesting to me. I liked art and I liked science. I was immersed into both at the same time. As soon as I took (the classes), I said, ‘This is the answer’. This is as good as it gets for that.”
Things improved immensely when Drozda moved from Philadelphia, where she had a concrete patio planter for a garden, back to Mt. Lebanon in 2016 with her husband, Jonathan Farnham, and 6-year-old daughter, Lexi.
Immediately, she transformed the front yard from a grass lawn that showcased lamb’s ear to an all-native plant-scape designed around two loads of landscape stone she purchased on Craigslist.
She also successfully transplanted a service berry. She started the tree from seed, which she harvested from a canal near where she lived previously in Philadelphia. Drozda also planted a flowering dogwood, hickory and white oak on her property.
“All the trees arrived in a box three years ago,” she said. “They are massive now.”
Last year, she started a vegetable garden. Enclosed with wire fencing to keep the deer and birds out, Drozda is growing tomatoes, peppers, collard greens, peas, beans, carrots, strawberries. cucumbers, carrots, basil, rhubarb, lettuce, parsley, arugula, even corn.
“The serviceberry is my sentimental favorite, but I love my vegetable garden,” Drozda said. “It’s my new toy.”
Drozda plays around in the garden because she says “it clears her mind about things” and she is anxious to show off her small estate. She hopes patrons will “tolerate” the blue tubes protecting the young saplings from the deer that constantly “nest down” in her backyard.
“When I went on the garden tour last year, most of the gardens were all grown and full. Like a forest,” she enthused. “It wasn’t like that always.
“People don’t see the before. I wanted to do the tour because they can watch things grow. It’s very sunny now but at some point, eventually, it will not be. A garden is always going to be a work in progress.”
Cashman’s garden has undergone constant change. It began as a cutting garden with annuals and progressed into a perennial patch since the family moved to the estate in 1981.
Married to Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas Judge David Cashman, who passed away in 2022, the couple had two children, Alex, who lives in Upper St. Clair with his wife and three children, and Chris, who still lives in Mt. Lebanon with his wife and two children.
While the home has been remodeled twice, the garden has undergone several changes since 2005.
Noting her 101-year-old mother, Francis Aloe, loved floral arrangements, Cashman planted annuals. She cut them weekly, placed them in a vase and presented them to Aloe, who now resides in Providence Point.
Cashman also had a vegetable garden, and she once once planted some 200 tulips in the cutting garden.
“Deer candy,” she said. “I learned my lesson.”
The animals also ate the vegetables, and Cashman’s mom started to use a walker. Cashman explained, this made it difficult for her mother to also handle a vase of flowers and maneuver the walker as well.
Hence, three years ago, Cashman transitioned to a perennial garden with the help of Claire Schuchman. A master gardener, Schuchman was featured on last year’s garden tour.
“Fifteen years ago, I was still willing to get on my hands and knees and plant things,” Cashman said. “I don’t do it anymore.
“Having a cutting garden was all annuals all the time. A ton of work. I prefer perennials now. They don’t require that amount of work.
“I am grateful that I have the ability to have pretty things around me and not be personally responsible for every bit of it.” she added.
Throughout her estate are several well-manicured garden plots featuring trellises, pots, an ornamental sculpture and fountain. However, the highlights are a Moon Gate and a Wizard. The former is a recently placed iron trellis, while the latter is a wooden figurine carved out of a diseased elm tree, pruned back in 2005.
“Between them, the plants get lost,” Cashman said jokingly.
Plants are indeed aplenty.
There are a variety of tree specimens, including a white birch and magnolias, as well as an herb garden featuring basil, parsley, oregano, thyme, chives and cilantro. Additionally, there are hydrangea, Russian sage, allium, cypress, juniper, hellebores, clematis, variegated rose of Sharon, climbing roses, begonia, creeping Jenny, as well as Cashman’s favorite, hibiscus.
“When they bloom, they are really spectacular. The contrast is amazing between the foliage and flower. Lights up wherever it is and goes all summer,” Cashman said.
Overall, she added regarding gardening, “I like the beautiful results.”
Proceeds from the garden tour benefit the library. Tickets are $20 in advance ($25 the day of the event, and available on the library’s website.
“The garden tour helps the library,” Cashman said. “I am a big supporter of the library.
“It takes me back to when I was growing up and my mother told the six of us, ‘Readers are leaders and leaders are readers.’ She encouraged us to have a book in hand. My grandchildren use the library now, and I am delighted with that. I am happy to help with the tour. It works for me.”