Tucked away next to a shopping center in the middle of Ross is a garden that Sue Colaizzi has been tending for nearly 50 years.
In mid-July, she’ll be welcoming guests to her home as one of five gardens on the Shaler Garden Club’s 17th annual Great Gardens Tour.
“It’s nice when people come and actually enjoy the garden and appreciate your hard work,” said Colaizzi, 79. “It’s rewarding to talk to people who garden and like what you’ve done.”
The tour will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, July 13. Proceeds benefit the Shaler North Hills Library, where tickets can be bought in advance for $20 or $25 on the day of the tour. Tickets also are available on the library’s website at shalerlibrary.org.
A member of the garden club was a supporter of the library, and the club maintains gardens at the library, said garden club member Judy Schiffbauer.
In addition to Colaizzi’s garden in Ross, this year’s tour features gardens at the homes of Debbie and Robert Busteed and Shawn and Suzanne Graham, both in Pine; Keith and Bobbie Smith in Fox Chapel; and William and Eileen Miller in Franklin Park.
The club selects gardens that are within a 20-minute drive of the library.
“It’s inspiring because of the creativity of the gardens,” Schiffbauer said. “It gives you ideas of things that you can do in your own garden. Even after 17 years of doing this, I still look forward to it.”
Tour participants begin with a stop at the library, 1822 Mt. Royal Blvd. in Shaler, where they will get the addresses and a map, and then can go to the gardens in any order they wish, said Sally Stritzinger of Shaler, a member of the garden club and co-chair of the tour.
“All five of them are really outstanding,” Stritzinger said of the gardens on this year’s tour.
The tour allows those with an interest in gardening to see different techniques and types of gardens such as pollinator gardens, native plant gardens, perennial gardens and different types of trees, she said.
“It’s a learning experience for people,” Stritzinger said. “People in the community and surrounding communities look forward to it each and every year.”
This will be the first year that the garden at the Smiths’ Fox Chapel home will be featured on Shaler’s tour. It was documented in the Smithsonian Archives of American Gardens in 2016.
The couple moved into a new home they had built on the property in 2012 after tearing down a neglected, century-old Georgian house. They worked with a landscape architect, who positioned the house on the lot, said Bobbie Smith, 82.
“Every single window has a view of some part of the yard. It’s really quite nice,” she said.
Creating the garden involved removing many old trees and invasive plants and replacing them with more than 100 native trees, evergreens and shrubs. Perennial gardens feature their favorite plants collected over the years.
“It’s changed quite a bit over the years,” she said. “The trees have grown, developing a canopy that subdues the weeds and invasives. I imagine they’re still there, waiting to come bursting through.”
A member of Fox Chapel’s garden club, Bobbie Smith said she is open to being on tours.
“I keep saying I’m going to stop, but I never do,” she said.
“It’s a passion of mine. I like to share that with people,” she said. “I like to talk gardening and, generally, people that come have an interest in gardening or they have questions. We can share ideas and I can show them what I like, and they can tell me about things they like. It’s fun.”
Alex and Sue Colaizzi’s 1929 “Stonehouse” sits on 2.5 acres of gardens in Ross. Gardening there for more than 47 years, they have added stone walls and iron gates to blend with the architecture of their home.
There is a swimming pool and a pond, large and small rock gardens, and a vegetable garden converted to a dahlia and cutting garden. Salvaged objects, columns, gates, benches and birdhouses are in unexpected places.
“It’s nice because we are right here in the middle of everything, but we’re tucked away and private,” Sue Colaizzi said.
They moved to Ross from the city.
“My husband thought coming out here was like going to Alaska. It was an adjustment for him. I loved it,” she said. “We just started little by little. There wasn’t much in the way of flowers when we first purchased the property. We spent years clearing brush and little by little started areas one a time.”
