44 AUGUST 2019 STLOUISHOMESMAG.COM
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“I look at every loss and mourn; then I look at that loss and see it as an opportunity to try something
new.” True to her word, it was the loss of two huge oak trees 10 years ago that transformed Martha LaFata’s
Webster Groves garden into the lush, green showplace it is today. Spreading over an entire acre, the
primarily shaded landscape appears as a verdant ocean animated by wave after wave of undulating
beds filled with over 300 varieties of hosta, untold astilbes, numerous ferns, delicate Japanese maples
and finely-textured conifers. With multiple aspects to explore, the garden seems to go on forever and
has become a garden tour Mecca for local visitors, including members of the Missouri Botanical
Garden and national gardening organizations meeting in St. Louis.
When those trees had to be taken down, Martha had already been gardening on her one-acre property
for 30 years. From the start it was an adventure. Thickets of honeysuckle and nondescript shrubs
surrounded her 100-year-old home. “It was totally overgrown,” she recalls. “You couldn’t see the house
from the road.” As she cleared the land, she uncovered horticultural treasures. “The house had been
owned by a botanist, but she had been in poor health. There were many nice old plants — things you
couldn’t find in nurseries at that time. I used a Wayside Garden catalogue as a guide to try to figure out
what things were. There were a lot of bulbs and spring ephemerals (which die back in hot weather) in
the garden. I discovered epimedium (a delicate, shade-loving ground cover with the common name