Garden of the Month: Dream home over the decades

More than 50 years ago, Russell and Charlotte Peck snatched up the last lot in Modesto’s Sherwood Forest subdivision – and with that grabbed the chance to design and build their dream home.

With the help of a landscape architect, they also realized their dream front yard, with lawn, masonry, privacy wall, private garden and more. Today, that yard at 405 King Richard Lane – with only a few tweaks made over the years – has garnered Garden of the Month honors for June from the Modesto Garden Club.

Charlotte Peck told the garden club that she wanted a yard with “good bones” and blooms year-round.

Among those blooms is her favorite – a Hawaiian ginger plant she was given as a starter from a friend who’d vacationed in Hawaii – a gift years ago, before more stringent Department of Agriculture regulations, according to the garden club. The plant’s beautiful yellow flower still blooms every year and provides a reminder for Peck of her friend.

During spring, hundreds of bulbs also sprout blooms of their own, including tulips, daffodils and freesias, plus flowering shrubs. Arriving with summer’s warmer weather are blooms of daisies, irises, daylilies, multicolored gerber daisies, arctotis, pansies, trailing verbena, armeria and others.

Other flowering shrubs and ground cover such as alyssum and lavender also bloom and provide perfect flora for bees and butterflies.

Only a few changes have been made since the landscape’s initial installation. After 40 years, huge trees that once marked the side perimeters began dropping large limbs and had to be removed because of possible danger. Crape myrtles and roses replaced the trees.

Other minor updates included changing out annuals and replacing poorly performing flowers or shrubs.

Sago palm and weeping blue atlas cedar trees remain original to the landscape. A cedar is close to the privacy wall and trails inside a private garden area.

A staggered walkway runs through the front yard leading to a wrought iron gate that reveals portions of that inner private garden where azaleas, camellias, purple pansies, a peach tree and other plants as well as a pond and statue that all provide a relaxing view from the home’s living room.

While the pond has remained dry since the drought, the lack of rain has not caused much havoc with the mature yard. Only some older roses succumbed to the city’s two-days-a-week watering restrictions.

The Modesto Garden Club’s regular meetings resume in September. See www.modestogarden

club.org or call 209-529-7360.

This story was originally published May 31, 2016 at 1:34 PM with the headline "Garden of the Month: Dream home over the decades."