BY GINNY GEIGER AND BARBARA ANDERSON
Garden Club of the Lakes
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS—Zero-scaping or xeriscaping is a style of landscape design requiring little or no irrigation or other maintenance. It is mostly used in arid regions. In Florida, irrigation is all that is needed, along with a little bit of weed pulling.
The Garden Club of the Lakes awarded Fred and Sandy Kopp the Yard of the Month for their xeriscaped homestead. They were both very pleased with this recognition. Fred actually said that they were “honored.”
The Kopps own a Georgia home where they live most of the summer, but they wanted a home in this area because Sandy has lived here most of her life. They bought the house at 265 Southwest Grove Street. in Keystone Heights two years ago.
Fred is very meticulous, as can be understood by his work with electron microscopes doing research in dentistry and nephrology. He used words that we could not even understand.
When he retired, he took his meticulous nature and made a most impressive landscape design in their front yard. In three months, using the five existing circular islands, he and Sandy completely gutted and redesigned their yard using the xeriscape landscape model. But he did not use a model. He and Sandy created the most unique, beautiful, and fascinating yard you probably have seen anywhere, at least around here – and they did it as their own design.
They used 16” patio stone pavers, colorful pea gravel, various grades of decorative stone, larger river pebble stones, and pond pebbles.
To all of this, they added colorful plants and flowers, such as Blue My Mind and Dianthus “Fire Witch,” and “Floral Lace Cherry” – Sandy’s favorites of them all.
The list of everything planted in their yard is too long to put in this article.
But you can drive by and see for yourself. They both get great pleasure from looking at all the various colors and welcome you to drive by and enjoy their hard work.
And that work never stops. When Fred was asked what he disliked, if anything, about his garden, he said the yellow sedge grass. Any early morning you drive by, you will see Fred and Sandy pulling little skinny green things that pop up overnight. It seems that it is impossible to kill the stuff.
If you want to learn more about the Garden Club of the Lakes or nominate yourself or anyone in the community for Yard of the Month, please call Pat Lorenzo at (904)728-9460.
