adn.com | Talk Dirt To Me : A Topiary Twosome

Talk Dirt To Me

Do you love to make mud pies, grow a houseplant, eat veggies, or stop to smell the bouquet on your co-workers desk? Everyone enjoys a bit of green growing around him or her and then there are those that are passionate and needy when it comes to dabbling in the dirt. With this blog, we'll try to satisfy those needs and tell you about what's going on with the Anchorage gardening scene. You know, as I finally learned, it's all about the dirt.

Photographer and gardener Fran Durner (fdurner@adn.com) writes the blog.

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2008 Anchorage garden tour

Take an interactive tour of the gardens showing in Anchorage's garden tour, with photos and audio commentary from each gardener.

A Topiary Twosome

Posted by talkdirt

Posted: June 18, 2008 - 12:03 pm

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Anna Sutton with a dinosaur, one of the first large topiaries that she and sister Patty created for a customer at Sutton's Greenhouse. Fran Durner/ADNThird generation greenhouse owners, Anna and Patty Sutton, are keeping the greenery growing, so to speak, at Sutton's Greenhouse on Tudor Road, now in it's 45th year. Opened by their grandmother Della Sutton, (who I remember from years ago as a wise-cracking, chain-smoking sweetheart) who worked the counter, and daughter-in-law, Arda, who did the planting, the Sutton dynasty doesn't appear to be waning with Patty's son, the 4th generation, helping around the greenhouse now.

The business unexpectly branched out recently when a customer - and Anna described most customers as friends - brought in a wire frame dinosaur and asked would they "do something with it," if they had the time. The "do something" turned into wrapping the frame with plastic, filling it with soil and wiring sheets of moss "skin" onto the dinosaur before planting it with succulents, lamiums, grasses and other fun textured greenery that fill in for eyes, tongue, topknot and spikes on it's tail.

Patty Sutton struggles to place an "eye" on a topiary moose, one of several topiaries made with moss that she and her sister Patty have created for customers at Sutton's Greenhouse. Fran Durner/ADNPretty soon the back greenhouse started to look like a menagerie with cats, dogs, rabbits, a chicken, fish and two Christmas reindeer-turned-moose the sisters and other greenhouse workers have been creating when they're not helping customers up front or doing other chores. A rooster and a salmon may be joining the group soon and Anna Sutton says they may donate one of the moose to the Alaska Botanical Garden when they are all done.

Jasmine Milwicz-Pavia, 7, picks out a sempervivum that will be used on a moss topiary moose being created by sisters Anna and Patty Sutton for a customer at Sutton's Greenhouse. Fran Durner/ADNAnna and family has been gathering the moss from her 60 acre property in Houston where they cleared trees for a driveway, which saves them a lot of money for materials and gives them moss with lots of texture, not to mention spiders, centipedes and beetles.

As of today, the dinosaur has not been delivered to it's owner, so you may still have time to visit the Sutton's Greenhouse topiary zoo.

Just don't feed the animals!

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2 July 2, 2008 - 1:15pm | talkdirt

Moose at ABG

One of the completed moose topiaries, planted with pansies and succulents, can be seen at the entrance to the lower perennial garden at the Alaska Botanical Garden. It is so cute!

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1 June 19, 2008 - 9:08am | rosmarinus

centipedes

In Alaska???

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