Published in Florida Gardening, May 2000

Russell Morash is all over Key West. In less than 8 weeks, he produced three programs for his syndicated TV shows, “This Old House”, “The New Yankee” and “The Victory Garden.”

“It was easy to find fodder for the renovation we wanted to do in ‘This Old House’; even furniture building for ‘The New Yankee’ was apparent,” said Morash, the Boston-based executive producer for all three shows. “But how to do ‘The Victory Garden’ wasn’t clear until we got behind the gates and fences.”

Key West is a garden city; a closed gate town where everything from parties to politics shape up under a canopy of lush vegetation. Touring these private outdoor enclaves is like peeking into living souls, hearts and minds, then coming home with all their best kept secrets.

Patrick Tierney is akin to this island’s confessor. He knows all the garden secrets. He knows how to make right the flaws; how to accent the high points. He is the landscape genius behind the four gardens Morash and crew filmed here in February, 1999.

“I never repeat a theme from one garden to the next; there are always new ways of seeing and doing things,” said Tierney, a Miami transplant to Key West ten years ago. “Gardening is not a job, it’s a creative lifestyle in which landscape designers are artists using shovels like brushes; my paints are the color of leaves.”

Using all the basic elements of design, Tierney mixes flower colors, leaf lines and shapes, tree trunk texture and the way light filters into what he calls the “challenge of space: Space is not square footage, but rather, space is in your mind,” he says.

Converting that mental image into lush gardens is the ultimate power of Tierney, who first talks with property owners to get a feel for perimeters. In this garden on Margaret Street, “magical, innovative, lush with mystery” echo along winding brick paths and rebound off giant traveler’s palm fronds.

“Not so deep, Dino...pan...pan...now let’s see it in detail,” instructs Morash to the cameraman, Steve D’Onofrio, via the headphones they both wear. “Oh, good. That’s good. Come in close on Holly and Patrick, now cut.”

Holly Shimizer is the hostess for this particular Victory Garden. She’s the managing director of the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Virginia, and Morash says he draws his hosts from a number of plant experts, depending on where in the world he’s filming.

“I’ve been doing this since 1975 -- 30 to 35 gardens a year from South Africa to Scotland,” said Morash. “Although I’ve featured public gardens in Florida like Fairchild’s and Marie Selby in Sarasota, getting into private gardens like these in Key West is harder to arrange.”

There is no script. Holly and Patrick just talk plants while Morash directs the dozen or so “takes” from an Analogue, hand-held monitor hooked up to the video camera. He makes what’s technically difficult -- walking, talking and looking good at the same time -- seem easy.

“You’ve given this rather small space an open feeling,” said Shimizer.

“Thank you. One way to do that is to take a piece of living art like this Bismarckia (Nobillias) and make it a focal point from which you can stand back and enjoy the surrounding plantings,” said Tierney. “Although each of my gardens are different, I always put in as many palms per square inch as can aesthetically fit.”

Tierney says palms are the prince of all trees: they don’t defoliate; they don’t outgrow their space, so gardens can be planned around them; and “the sound of palm fronds snapping in the breeze is a true gift from Paradise.”

Low maintenance is another Tierney garden hallmark: “I use a lot of native plants to suit the soil and climate, and I never use snail bait like begonias and impatiens,” he said. “Foliage grows quickly in the tropics, so you don’t want to have to clip a ficus hedge every week.”

But variegated ginger (Alpinnium veriogudum), elephant ears (Alacacia oledera), a variety of haliconias and bromiliads hold their own with graceful palms, as do orchids of various species. They adorn tree trunks with colorful flowers, accenting the adventurous yellow print of outdoor dining room furniture amidst flowing purple and red deck curtains because, well, only Hawaii and the Florida Keys offer the luxury of year-round, indoor-outdoor living.

“We’re getting close, folks, but when we do it this time, I want Holly and Patrick to look like they’re tied together with a 20-inch string; no space between them,” said Morash. “Holly, see this magical garden for the first time. Feel the freshness. Be enthused about the color. Experience it, get the rhythm, now one, two, three, go.”

In barely an hour, the garden on Margaret Street’s a wrap. Next comes Fleming Street, then two gardens in Truman Annex. Twenty years of producing and directing “The Victory Garden” speaks to Morash’s talent, and to gardening in Key West where, last spring, four Tierney designed gardens aired on PBS.

By Barbara Bowers, © 1997

For "Key West Garden Club By The Sea" by Barbara Bowers, CLICK HERE