The Roan garden-A haven for plants and pollinators – by Diane Morey Sitton

It’s not surprising that one of Mary Roan’s favorite quotes reads: “Creating a garden starts with an interest and soon becomes a lifetime’s obsession, one that can be engaged at a moment’s notice by simply stepping outside.” (This Beautiful Fantastic, 2017)

Indeed. Step outside of Steve and Mary Roan’s Nacogdoches residence and you’re met with flower-filled beds and borders, flowering shrubs, a gazebo that showcases potted plants, a vegetable garden filed with tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, squash, onions and herbs, not to mention Mary’s hand-crafted, brightly-painted signs that contain garden-themed quips, quotes and rhymes. Recently, the garden was featured in the annual “Tour of Home Gardens,” sponsored by “Keep Nacogdoches Beautiful.”

Like most gardens, the Roan landscape has evolved. The backyard, dominated by a “HUGE” shade-casting sweetgum tree when the Roans bought the house eight years ago, is now dedicated to sun-loving pollinator plants. To fill in after the removal of the tree, and to control the rainwater runoff that flows down the side of the house and through the backyard, the Roans constructed a picturesque dry creek, then added a footbridge. “When it rains really hard ‘a river runs through it,’ literally,” she exclaims.

“I designed the shape, we cleared the grass, laid down two layers of weed protection, and brought in the rocks,” she says. When weeds manage to push through the weed barrier, Mary pulls them by hand whenever possible, but she confesses to occasionally spraying weed killer.

“I only spray weed killer as a last ditch effort because the entire idea of the beds and plantings is for the birds, bees and butterflies,” she says.

The Roans’ pollinator smorgasbord starts with the salvias (‘Black and Blue’ and ‘Indigo Spires’) that thrive in a bed adjacent to the dry creek.

“I love salvias because they come back, they are easy to grow, and bees and hummingbirds love them,” she says. “Pollinators are so critical to our food supply that I want to do anything I can to help the little `public servants’ along.” Red cardinal vine, sweet pea vine, lantana and zinnia (“happy, hardy plants”) thrive in the Roan garden, as well.

The milkweed is for butterflies. “Butterflies have a function, and I want to help them do what they were designed to do,” she says. “We live in the monarch highway, so I’m always on the search for the native milkweed…the white blooming one. It’s hard to find.” Other butterflies that enliven the garden include Gulf fritillary, viceroy, Eastern tiger swallowtail, skippers and buckeyes.

Birds, too, enjoy the Roans’ hospitality.

Mary lures Carolina wrens with mealworms. She puts out black oil sunflower seeds for cardinals and goldfinches (winter and early spring). Songbird mix nourishes doves and sparrows.

“To me, birds are unconventional pollinators,” she says. “I think most birds have the potential to spread seeds that grow into flowers that produce pollen. I once had a Philippine lily grow in the middle of a mutabilis rose. Some bird must have dropped the little seed, the plant grew, produced beautiful blooms, and in those blooms there was pollen for the bees!”

But the Roans don’t just invite bees, butterflies and birds: “beasties” in the form of insects and even “good” snakes (like the speckled king snake and the rat snake) are welcome in a back secret garden.

“We let that space grow a bit wild for the sake of the insects,” says Mary. “We have fireflies in the summer that love that garden, and I love the fireflies. Spiders live undisturbed there and have room for their webs. The Charlotte’s Web spiders, those lovely garden spiders, are always welcome.”

While the Roans don’t have upcoming plans for the garden—besides adding the hummer birdbath that Mary is working on now—Mary is quick to remark, “If every inch of the yard from the dry creek back was full of wildflowers, I would love it.”

It’s likely the birds, bees, butterflies and beasties would love it, too!