Kerry Ann Mendez: No Hostage Is She

Kerry Ann Mendez gets things done. As owner of Perennially Yours, she is a garden consultant, author, columnist, speaker, event planner (Great Gardens and Landscaping Symposium) and teacher. She is a woman of practical ideals.

“We get emotionally attached to gardens,” she says. “They’re our children.” But just like children, gardens grow up and Mendez knows practical ways to help gardeners move on.

Kerry’s Garden Checklist:
1. Look at the garden’s location. Ask yourself: ‘Can I enjoy it from inside the house? Or on the way to the house? Can I see it and enjoy it from different vantage points?’

2. Downsize the garden. It may not mean reducing the garden’s size. More often, it means changing plants. Take a good look at the plant material. Switch some plants out and bring in others that take 50% less time and work but still bring beauty. For instance replace burning bush with fothergilla with great red/orange/yellow foliage in fall, fragrant flowers in spring and colorful blue-green foliage in summer and little pruning needed.

“Take a plant that costs less in time and energy, that’s not invasive and has more seasons of interest. Like campanula that needs a lot of pinching and deadheading and replace it with Geranium ‘Roseanne’ that never needs any deadheading, flowers from mid-June to fall, still gets the blue color and three more months of color.”

3. Slash time and energy with native plants. They thrive on less fertilizer, spraying and watering so you spend less money and save time.

4. Select plants with incredible foliage.

5. Use thugs and self-seeders. Plants that spread fast are great to cover spaces and keep weeds down.

6. Use fewer varieties but more of less. “Instead of 25 different plant varieties, go with five. Using more of each takes less time to do maintenance. You use the same motion on a lot of plants.” It is economy of motion. But Mendez cautions to “make sure they have more than one season of interest with either dried seed heads or foliage.” Think about it: if you don’t get continual interest, you’ll have a massive mess.

7. Use cool containers as a focal point. Statues give the eyes a rest from plant material.

Mendez got into gardening in the early 80s while working as Associate Director of Alumni Relations at Union College in Schenectady, New York. She fell into hard financial times. “One day when I drove past acres of field grown perennials I pulled into the driveway and asked the woman for a Saturday job. She hired me. I worked there Friday and Saturday in the field on my knees dividing perennials.”

The woman talked Kerry into starting her own business. Then in June 2003, after 18 years at Union, she was full time into gardens – teaching, writing, speaking. “I’m always working. I’m so blessed. I sold 8,000-9,000 copies of my first two books. It all started with a woman who took a chance on me.”