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BLUEBIRDS BY BARBARA LUNA

IRIS SALE COMING THIS FALL
The Horticulture Club will hold their Fall Iris Sale on
Saturday, September 10 from 9 a.m. to noon, so mark
your calendars. Numerous varieties of bearded irises
in every classification will be available. Many will be
sold as bare rhizomes, others potted.

JULY YARD OF THE MONTH able.” They kept but reconfigured the PHOTO BY DEVON NUNEMANN
JACK AND DONNA STEWART huge deck with a birds-eye view of the
golf course. They rearranged the shrub- ened with an array of seasonal flower-
130 LARKSPUR LANE (N10) bery in the front bed. And they began ing plants. This spring, poppies, daisies,
Passers-by often complement Jack adding plants that caught their eye. salvias and mealy blue sage were in
and Donna Stewart on their beauti- Now a background of green is bright- bloom. What a renovation – today this
ful “English garden.” But the garden landscape is an eye-catcher.
wasn’t always beautiful and there’s a ~Carol Parsonage
story behind it’s restoration. The Stew-
art home served as headquarters for J U LY 2 0 1 6 SUNRAYS | 125
the first Sun City Vacation Getaways.
Once new getaway homes were built,
the “headquarters” was closed and
only minimally maintained. When the
Stewarts arrived in 2008 the house was
vacant and needed work, and the yard
was overgrown with nandina, turk’s
cap and Mexican mint marigold. Why
did the Stewarts buy this fixer-upper?
Jack saw a challenge in the work to
be done and they both recognized the
location was special. Truthfully, the site
is stunning. The home sits at the end
of Larkspur Lane nestled between a
beautiful natural ravine and the first
green of Legacy Hills Golf Course. There
are plenty of original trees, the most
spectacular an ancient live oak that
dominates the back yard. The Stewart’s
first gardening effort was to clear out
the invasive species. “We planned on
removing one turk’s cap a day” Donna
says. “That made the task seem do-

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