Hosting garden tours was all but inevitable when Jim Zink moved into his Lancaster city home.
Previous owners of his South Lime Street abode set the precedent.
In 2001, Pat Coller welcomed folks inside her fence to peruse an 18th-century-style herb and vegetable garden and a 125-year-old seckel pear tree. In 1985, Robert and Chardee Case told the Intelligencer Journal that tourgoers would find in their garden “examples of good design, color, texture and how gardens relate to the house and to the people living in it.”
And in the mid-’70s, a couple by the last name of Heisey offered tourgoers courtyard stenciling demonstrations and a chance to interact with an actor portraying the home’s most famous inhabitant, artist Jacob Eichholtz. Said to have done more than 800 portraits by the time he died in 1842, Eichholtz lived and painted there late in his life.
“So, we’ve had a few tours come through,” Zink says.
He says he enjoyed his turn at having people stroll through his backyard. Future residents may do the same one day. But for Zink, that season has ended. When neighborhood organizers debated whether to bring back a tour tradition halted by COVID-19, Zink let them know if they did, he’d be taking a pass.
“I told them I’ve done my last tour,” he says.
There is pressure to get it looking just so, he says. But Zink says he’s pleased to have people peek over the fence into a yard he’s had since 2002 when he bought the place with his wife, Barbara, who died in 2013. Zink says he knows he’s fortunate to have a home that’s part of the city’s tapestry and not too terribly different than it was two centuries ago.
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Tending to history
“Nothing bad has ever been done to this house. That’s the beauty of it to me,” Zink says. “It’s never been apartments or lawyers’ offices. Everybody’s been a good steward who has lived here. And since 1825, there’s only been about 10 families.”
They’ve all watched the same group of backyard rhododendrons grow. Those are believed to have been planted by Robert Eichholtz, Jacob’s son, around 1900. That can be weighty to think about, Zink says. And it can be physically exhausting.
“I was working in the garden one day and said, ‘This is not much fun anymore,’ ” Zink says. “Ben was working across the street and I went over and said, ‘Ben, would you please help me?’ ”
That would be Ben DeGaetano. Zink knew him from his days selling herbs at Lancaster Central Market. Before getting into gardening, DeGaetano was working in regenerative farming and also had a market stand.
The Lime Street garden is one of DeGaetano’s favorites to work in. He likes its history. He’s embracing its current chapter.
“Even when I was farming, which is what I did before I became a professional gardener, I always sort of felt this connection to the millions of gardeners and growers before me,” he says. “I’m just here now. People have gardens to be present in them.”
Zink says he doesn’t get into the garden as often as he should. But he does spend time there with his partner, Ann Moore. They knew each other in high school. They didn’t date then. They did work together on a crew of teens hired by a poultry vet to catch chickens so he could vaccinate them.
Moore lives elsewhere in the city and has a unique urban garden, too. Hers is focused on pollinators.
“I only have Ben come once a year,” she says. “It’s kind of wild. But that’s better for me. More my kind of garden, though I do like this one.”
Her favorite feature in Zink’s is a pond. A dogwood grows next to that.
“I planted that to sort of arch over the pond and provide a more willowy aspect to the more structural elements,” DeGaetano says.
Near that grows a Chamaecyparis.
“The pear tree died on my watch,” Zink says. “I’m hoping just of old age.”
A lilac went, too. After about seven or so years of working there, DeGaetano had grown attached to that and was keeping its care consistent.
“It had new growth each year and was just doing its thing,” he says. “Then it showed some signs of distress. I tried feeding it and it was like, ‘I hate that’ and died entirely. That was a sore loss.”
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Growing and changing
There’s a new boxwood arrangement in the corner the lilac once owned. Things do evolve in the garden that’s set against a backdrop of The Lord’s House of Prayer on East Vine Street. In Eichholtz’s time, that would have been the recently chartered Zion Lutheran Church.
“I definitely have the best view of that in the city,” Zink says.
Color elements in the church are reflected by Zink’s azaleas, phlox, oak leaf and lace cap hydrangea, hostas of various shades spilling into each other and surprises like Swiss chard, which DeGaetano tossed in for a touch of edible interest.
“I installed the crane’s bill,” he says. “The corydalis is all over. I don’t know if anybody ever planted that.”
Zink shakes his head.
“You can pull it out by the handfuls and it’s there again,” Zink says.
An apple tree in another corner was there when DeGaetano started working for Zink. It takes some effort to keep that one healthy, he says.
DeGaetano trained hedges to grow together into an archway by using some boards, chicken wire and twine.
“When I first came into this garden, I was really struck by the compartmentalization and how structural it seemed,” he says.
He thinks the first thing he did there was to cut the top piece of ivy growing on the fence.
“And I started going from there, working back,” he says. “It’s like it’s divided into six rooms. And all of them are connected.”
He keeps things trimmed to increase site lines between spaces.
“When you’re standing in one, you can see through to the next and the next one beyond that,” he says.
He also trims for health reasons.
“One of the things about the city is that because of the amount of plants that are in such tight proximity, there are issues with powdery mildew,” he says. “So a lot of it is keeping it trimmed to promote air flow. And then treating it with a copper sulfide and continual feeding.”
DeGaetano is a topiary enthusiast who enjoys busting out shears toward that end. Case in point, Zink’s euonymus, to which he’s given distinct shapes.
“People are hesitant about euonymus, because they grow so quickly,” he says. “But they also trim really nicely.”
DeGaetano gives Zink’s a serious chop about twice a year, with a few touch ups in between.
“It is some effort. But to maintain interest in your garden, you’re going to have to put in some effort,” he says. “Everybody wants a no-maintenance or a low-maintenance garden. I don’t. I want to spend time there.”
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