You can’t help but love Tony Foddis’ garden.
Drive up to the front door and you’ll see a veritable Eden, with fruits, vegetables and flowers all mixed together in one small yard. And that’s just the front yard. In the back, where the vegetable garden is the main feature, there is an abundance of apples, cherries, strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes, Spanish onions, basil and Foddis’ pride and joy, artichokes.
Clematis and grapevines grow to the rooftop and there are even tomatoes and petunias hanging from a dozen pots suspended from the eaves of Foddis’ house. If there is an extra square inch of yard or house, Foddis has something growing there.
The secret to all this vibrant growth, Foddis claims, is a fertilizer that is more commonly found on drugstore shelves than at gardening centres – Epsom salts –which is magnesium sulphate and is apparently just as good for plants as it is for soaking feet.
“It’s good for you and good for the roses and tomatoes,” says Foddis, who adds a tablespoon or two of Epsom salts to the can every time he waters the plants.
Still there’s got to be more to this garden than careful fertilizing and watering. True, at the base of most of the plants there’s a layer of slightly composted grass clippings. The mulch helps to enrich the soil at the same time as it helps maintain moisture levels. In addition, Foddis plants everything closely together so that there is little room for weeds. Many gardeners use similar tricks and achieve admiral results but Foddis’ garden is something else.
“The secret is amorĂ©. The secret to everything is love. Love is the secret to life and it’s the secret to work. Love is the secret to gardening,” says Foddis.
Sadly, the true love of his life and wife of 47 years, Giovanna, died two years ago. She had a real artistic flair and the couple developed this unusual yard together. If anything, his wife’s death has intensified Foddis’ gardening passion.
“For everything bad that happens, there is good that happens. They go together,” he says simply.
Foddis, 73, is not retired, but instead still works as a pipefitter, welder and plumber. Everything he does, he learned on the job or by reading about it, he says, adding he searches the Internet for gardening tips.
He likes to experiment in the garden and is constantly trying to grow the vegetables he grew up with in Italy.
“You have to try. It’s like artichokes. People said they wouldn’t grow here, but I found a way. Now I’m trying to grow chestnuts,” he says.
His cherry trees are like sculptures as they twist and turn around a supporting rod. Foddis began training the trunks to grow like vines when the trees were saplings. Despite their unusual appearance, in another few weeks, Foddis will have an abundance of cherries.
“You can make the tree grow the way you want if you try. I’ve done it with different trees. You have to shape it up. Like kids. And if you don’t look after the garden, it goes to weeds. So it is with the family,” he says.
He used his plumbing skills to string a kind of overhead sprinkler system up to the flowerpots that are hanging from the roof of the house.
While Foddis likes to put his raison d'Ä‚Ĺžtre as love, there’s something else happening in this garden too, and that’s a sense of humour. He made two folk-art style sculptures and stuck them up by the front door.
“They are Romeo and Juliet. I’m going to put up a sign that says, ‘I love Romeo’,” he says.
Then Foddis points to the one special thing in his garden that he likes best of all.
“Go over there. Look! Look! Do you see it? Can’t you see it?” he says pointing vaguely between the artichokes and the cherries.
I search and search for the special thing. Foddis’ English is sometimes hard to understand and I’m confused about what he is trying to show me. I look down. I look up. And then, just as my chin is pointed to the sky, a gleeful Foddis turns a lever and the overhead fountain sprays a cooling mist of water through the hot July sunshine.
“I have fountains everywhere. I’m a plumber. I’ll never run out of water,” he says with a grin.
