Flower Garden | Gardener’s Gift To Weymouth Youth
In contrast to the tidy, conservative landscaping of most public buildings, the perennial garden at the Weymouth Teen Center, which is also home to the recreation department and the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS), projects a casual, exuberant spirit of youth, with flowers of different varieties and colors mixed throughout.
“The garden was started by Mark Hall, a social worker with Youth and Family Services,” said Karen DeTellis. “He wanted it to look like flowers in a vase. That was his grand design, and that’s why they’re scattered, rather than all together.”
DeTellis is “the secret gardener” who helped Hall get the garden started 12 years ago and took over when he left DYFS several years later.
“At the time, I owned a home on Commercial Street and I was starting a garden there,” she said. “I would buy extra plants and bring them for the garden, and it just grew from there.”
DeTellis has experimented with different varieties to find what works best in the west-facing garden that has limited full-sun exposure.
“Ten years ago, I bought a bag of seeds. That’s how I started, with a mixture,” she said. “Some of those perennials are still coming up. It’s pretty amazing. There’s a lot of Echinacea – the coneflowers – and the Shasta daisies that have just gone by. There’s coreopsis, the yellow flowers that wave in the breeze, and a lot of lilies, both the day lilies and the Asiatic lilies. They’re very reliable.”
DeTellis tries new plants each year from her own garden or “harvested” from other people’s yards.
“I have a lot of things given to me,” she said.
DeTellis also plants annuals.
“The advantage of the perennials is they come up every year,” she said. “They reseed or come up from rootstock, so every year you have your garden. The advantage of the annuals is they last throughout the season; some will be blooming pretty late in the season, but they don’t come back.”
The hardy perennials don’t require a lot of watering, but the annuals do need attention in the hot weather, DeTellis said. She also spends hours during the summer evenings and on weekends pulling weeds, trimming past-season plants and deadheading old flowers to keep the garden looking its best and to promote new growth.
“It takes a lot of time. I find it relaxing, actually,” she said. “I do it for the love of the garden, and also it keeps me busy. That’s important, too.”
Butterflies and birds
Most of DeTellis’ work in the garden is done when the building is closed, but she said she sometimes receives comments from passersby while she’s there.
“I’m very happy that people do appreciate it,” she said. “The children see the butterflies and they like that. It makes it
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