A MID-CITY REFUGE: THEMIS STREET GARDEN ATTRACTS ATTENTION

The TV antenna in the middle of Jerome Seyer's garden is functional only if you are a bird looking for a roost.

A horse-head-shaped piece of driftwood found in a creek near Egypt Mills has no known purpose there by the koi pond. Now, neither do the small black stove that heated his family's farmhouse when Seyer was a boy nor the old-fashioned pitcher pump that fetched their water. But they are in the garden, too.

It doesn't seem to belong here in the 400 block of Themis Street, a lot-sized garden sandwiched between an apartment house and a three-story yellow brick home. But this is where Seyer, a truck driver, and his wife, Brenda, a nurse, have created a refuge of the familiar for themselves, an oasis of green that draws others to it as well.

The Seyers live on the second floor of a commercial building they own a block away on Broadway. For nearly 20 years he has been coming here after work to dig, plant and prune until the sun vanishes. He says the garden restores him.

"You can be tense and come over here and it goes away."

The flowering part of the garden is not yet in its splendor this spring, though the hollyhocks and the snowball bush are thriving. Soon, lilies, irises, redbud trees and great patches of wildflowers will engulf the familial artifacts in waving color.

The land originally was a gravel parking lot the Seyers bought so their two young sons would have a place to play. As the children grew up, the garden grew as well.

Seyer dug the hole and troweled the concrete for the koi pond, and he built the small weathered barn at the back of the garden.

Until recent years, fruits and vegetables were almost as plentiful as flowers. Now they keep the maintenance low by planting perennials.

Seyer knows each plant by sight if not by name. "Everything in here I planted," he says.

The garden has no running water or electricity. To water the plants, he runs a hose from his building 500 feet across another parking lot.

The garden has had setbacks through the years. Raccoons dined on the original group of the Japanese goldfish called koi. Today, the koi spend most of their time hiding, and the pond is peppered with tadpoles.

Some kind of vandalism seems to occur every Riverfest, he says. But friendly, inquisitive visitors are as common at Seyer's garden as the purple martins that keep the mosquitoes down.

A tour bus once emptied at the garden to let the passengers walk around. Others bring him things to plant, like the cactus that was a gift from a nearby apartment dweller.

His mother-in-law brought the pine tree at the back of the garden from Nova Scotia 20 years ago. It's now more than 30 feet tall.

Over the years, many people have offered to buy the lot the garden is on. Seyer doesn't know what their plans were. "I wasn't even interested," he said.

"As far as I'm concerned it'll always be a garden."