Apex woman turns two acres into gardens galore

Southern gardening is simple if you keep in mind that patience is a key virtue and that working with the existing landscape is easier than fighting an uphill battle against it.

In her woodland garden in Apex, Rita Mercer is still figuring out ways to work with the seemingly insurmountable gardening odds she faced when she fell in love with the house on a hill above Beaver Creek in 1988. Contending with steep slopes, poor soil, heavy shade, tree roots that compete with landscape plants for soil moisture and nutrients -- and also make digging difficult -- would test the patience of Job. But, over the years, Mercer has transformed her woodsy two acres into an enchanting series of theme gardens.

The Cotton Candy garden glows in springtime with rhododendrons and azaleas in shades of pink. The Camellia Forest garden adds color in the deep and dappled shade of the tall pines and hardwood trees. The Pondside Garden and a series of Terrace Gardens leading down to the pond contain a wonderful mixture of flowering plants for spring and summer color.

Mercer mixes perennials with all manner of ground covers, shrubs and small trees chosen for their dramatic textures and foliage color for all seasons. Because her husband, Denny, likes red, Mercer included flowers in shades of red for the Hangar Gardens surrounding his small aircraft hangar.

Denny Mercer, a pilot so passionate about flying that he has a hangar and airstrip adjacent to his backyard, said jokingly, "Rita is not subject to obsessions like me."

But, of course, she is.

Her obsession with creating her woodland garden led her to study shade gardening on her own, then to attend seminars and join plant societies. After that came volunteering at public gardens and a Master Gardener certificate. She's now self-employed as a gardening consultant, accredited by The Garden Club of America. Her gardening career got off to a slow start -- through mostly trial and error, she learned that if a plant failed in one spot, she could move it to a new location. Sometimes she found that even plants that are always recommended for full sun will also work in shade.

Her trick is to acclimate sun-lovers by starting them as seedlings in shade. She said, "The Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldsturm') and purple coneflower (Echinacea) are great examples of plants that not only tolerate shade, but thrive if you start them out as babies there."

In the sunny areas surrounding the pond at the entrance to her garden, Mercer built terraces, berms and raised beds using available leaves that she grinds up and turns into compost and mulch. Heavy mulch is, of course, the ideal habitat for attracting voles, but Mercer has a solution.

"My secret for keeping the voles from destroying my plants is to line new beds with heavy painter's plastic from the hardware store and turn a couple of inches up all around the edges to discourage the voles from entering the bed."

As she showed me the edge of the plastic liner on a new hosta bed, Mercer stuck her fingers directly into a vole tunnel that led up to the plastic liner. She laughed, happy to show proof positive that the plastic liner had thwarted a vole from devouring her tender new hostas.

Next to the street, in the sunnier Cul-de-Sac and Mailbox Gardens, Mercer uses drought-tolerant, sun-loving plants for a colorful display in spring, summer and fall. A variety of sedums, German iris, Spanish lavender, purple 'Homestead' verbena and Setcreasea 'Purple Heart' blanket the ground below taller Double Purple Datura, Hibiscus grandiflorus (velvet mallow), the brilliant yellow Golden Lace (Patrinia scabiosafolia), and a dramatically shaped Japanese maple (Acer palmatum 'Tamukeyama').

Mercer's garden has received the Apex Appearance Award and is a certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat. She relishes sharing her experience and useful tips on shade gardening during her annual open garden days. It's also an opportunity to share the surplus plants that spring up in the most unlikely places throughout her landscape.

Because so many of the flowering plants and trees in her landscape spread or self-seed easily, Mercer simply weeds out the excess and pots them up to sell at her open garden events each year.