Mary (Mimi) Backer said this was the first time her garden had ever been in a contest.
Longtime Evesham resident Mary (Mimi) Backer is well known for her green thumb, but now she’s getting used to being known for her blue ribbon as well.
The Philadelphia Horticultural Society recently awarded Backer a blue ribbon for her home garden in the 2016 PHS Garden and Greening Contest.
From forget-me-nots, mums and marigolds, to coneflowers, celosia and Stella de Oro daylilies, Backer said she’s been tending her garden for about 20 years.
Backer said there could be nearly 100 species of flora in bloom at one time in her garden, which stretches around walls and fence of her home on Carlton Avenue and fills multiple flowerbeds in her backyard.
Yet despite her blue-ribbon win, Backer said the PHS contest was the first time her garden had been in a competition, and even then it was her husband Bob who entered the garden in the contest without her knowledge.
Backer recalls when the PHS officials arrived in early August with clipboards in hand ready to measure and photograph her plants.
“I worked like a maniac the week before they came,” Backer said. “There were no weeds anywhere. I was so exhausted after they left.”
Judges ultimately selected Backer’s garden from more than 300 other gardens in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Backer said she started gardening about two decades ago with small plants in the front of her house, before moving to her backyard when her husband installed a patio.
While most of the backyard was originally off limits because of children playing football and soccer, eventually that space opened as well for a koi pond and more flowerbeds.
According to Backer, maintaining a garden the size and variety of hers can require four to five hours of work every day, which starts every year with basic weed removal around the first day of April.
With some perennials already in place, Backer said she and her husband start the spring with about 10 flats of annuals and only spend about $300 or less. While she doesn’t allow her husband in her flowerbeds, she said he does handle the lawn and helps clean up after her.
As the season moves on, Backer describes the constant work of transplanting and monitoring her plants to ensure everything has room to grow, cutting plants back and making way for new ones when necessary.
“You just have to watch them carefully because quickly some plant can get overshadowed by another, and then it won’t do well. You just have to watch them,” Backer said.
Although the PHS judges were the most recent people to recognize the work Backer puts into her garden, they weren’t the first.
“I think everybody knows our house is the house with the flowers. People walk by and they’ll say, ‘can we take a look at your backyard,’ and we have a lot of people coming through looking at it,” Backer said.
When asked what she loves most about gardening, Backer said it was the creativity it allows her.
“You have a picture in your mind when you plant a plant, and you picture it growing a certain way. If it doesn’t, you have to change your picture and put something else in its place,” Backer said.
Backer said she still gets nervous every spring to see which of her plants are starting to come back and which aren’t, and each year, she never really knows for sure if she’s going to make it back out.
“There have been years where I said this might be the last year, but then I get out there,” Backer said.
A reception to honor Backer and other PHS winners will be held in mid-November.
