GARDEN VARIETY: TAKING RISKS WITH PLANTS COULD BE KEY TO SUCCESS, AREA GARDENERS SAY

It doesn't take tons of intellect about plant names and horticulture to care for a garden, but it does require patience, persistence and the willingness to take some risks, area gardeners say.

"You don't have to be Martha Stewart to do any of this," said Margaret Lents of Cape Girardeau.

Gardening is a relaxing, therapeutic activity for Lents. And it's always a work in progress.

Like most gardeners, she spends several hours a day working in her flower and vegetable gardens. The work never ends with weeding chores, deadheading spent blossoms and mulching the beds.

But gardeners never see their work as a chore. "It's like growing a child," Lents said. "You nurture it and it produces."

Hannah Maddox, also of Cape Girardeau, walks out to see her garden beds the first thing each morning. She's checking to see what grew overnight.

And there are plenty of plants shooting up from the ground in her sun-loving bed.

However, that hasn't always been the case. The backyard bed was a new addition to the yard last year after several trees were cut. The pine trees had gotten too tall and were interfering with power lines nearby.

Maddox said she wept over the loss of the 14 pine trees that lined her yard, but she's growing accustomed to the new bed and the view it offers. "We agonized over what to do," she said.

She and her husband, Finley, planted a screen of tall shrubs and holly bushes at the farthest edge of the bed and worked in other blooming perennials and annuals.

With Shasta daisies, purple coneflowers and butterfly bushes to delight them, birds and butterflies are welcome guests in Maddox's garden.

She watched a Monarch butterfly patrol her bushes last fall before flying to warmer climates. Most of her butterfly bushes were grown from cuttings before being added to the bed.

Plants that didn't produce well or bloom have been moved to new locations in both Lents' and Maddox's gardens.

Maddox said her garden is always in the process of change. Her home on Fairlane was built from a bare lot so any of the trees and plants that adorn the yard were added by her. Sometimes that means her plants are in a hodgepodge.

"I like best whatever's blooming at the time," Maddox said. Although most of the early plants have finished blooming, her roses were full until the rain pelted their petals.

Lents said the mistake a lot of people make is not moving a plant for fear it might die. Irises or lilies don't bloom well when they get too thick. She split some of her lilly bulbs last year and they've come back twice as thick this season.

"Not everything is going to work," she said. The best way to get results is to test the soil in the yard and to do research on plants.

Knowing what will grow in the area, what kind of soil the plant likes and its sunlight requirements are key to good gardening, Lents said.

When she and her husband moved to Cape Girardeau from Memphis, Tenn., seven years ago, there were some plants she brought with her but not everything survived that move.

Irises from her mother's yard have done well but that's about all. Lents hasn't been pleased with the display from her azaleas and rhododendrons planted in a front bed. She's not sure that it's a temperature problem but thinks the difference in the soil hasn't helped them grow as large. She lost about 20 azaleas over the winter.

"You've got to know where the damp areas are or how much sun it gets," she said. There are plants that do better with morning sun and others that require afternoon sunlight.

Lents said she spent almost $1,000 trying to amend the soil in a back portion of her yard so that she could plant a vegetable garden. She had truckloads of sand, manure and topsoil added to no avail. Finally she gave up and built raised vegetable beds in another spot that boost crops of strawberries, horseradish, oregano, tarragon, beets, beans and tomatoes.

"We learned as we went," Lents said of her gardening plans. She and her husband, Rickey, didn't make an extensive plan for their gardens before they built and moved into their house on Kenneth.

Another key to gardening success is to quit fighting plants and their natural traits and let them grow, Lents said. One area of the lot is too damp for grass to grow so she and her husband have planted bamboo, willows and horsetail and are "just letting it stay wild."

A garden is an individual thing, Lents said. "Some people think that have to have order, but I like to be different."

Her roses are mixed with cannas and some annuals and herbs, like dill and mint.

"It's not just flowers -- the need to plant overwhelms me," she said.