July 25, 2010
By Bill Cary
The Journal News

Gardeners plant for all kinds of reasons. Some love to see a rainbow of color scattered across their yards: pink-headed geraniums, sky-blue petunias and lilies in Day-Glo shades of magenta, orange and canary yellow. Even patches of leafy green Pachysandra and myrtle make a welcome change from ordinary grass. Others like to cook, and they decorate their patios with potted

cherry tomatoes and baby eggplants, fragrant rosemary, lemon thyme and Thai basil. Then there are those sometime gardeners who just like to fill up on sunshine and putter around the yard.

But there's also a passionate group of devoted gardeners who turn to their trowels and planting beds in hard times. For them, the garden is sanctuary, a place where they can go to cope and lose themselves in their hydrangeas and lilacs — and in ordinary chores like weeding and pruning. Bill O'Donnell of Harrison , for example, uses gardening as an escape from grueling cancer treatments. For Nanuet's Lois Powers, the garden is a tangible reminder of her own rebirth and renewal. And Rita

Kokkoris' Cortlandt Manor garden helps her grieve for her late husband, the man who taught her the art of making things grow.

These are just a few of the inspiring stories we've heard these last few months, and here in Life & Style — and in the Sunday Express — we're celebrating local growers whose gardens have helped them through adversity. While every gardener may plant for his own reasons, each one is a loving nurturer, constantly breathing new life into whatever's ailing. And it seems, in hard times, nature is all too happy to return the favor.

From Ruin to Redemption
Lois Powers, Nanuet

Gardening got me through ... homelessness. "Eight years ago I lost everything and had to start over," says Powers. Thanks to bad business dealings by her former husband, the Internal Revenue Service seized Powers' house and changed the locks. "I left with the shirt on my back and $21 in my pocket," she says.

The kindness of strangers: At her lowest, Powers was homeless, and often intoxicated, sleeping in the woods or sneaking into her old house in Suffern. Eventually, though, she got the help she needed through Rockland social services. Newly clean and sober, she found a waitress job at the Nanuet Restaurant, and the owner, Mary Chamberlain, offered her an apartment in a nearby building that she owned.

Garden salvation: Powers took a trash-strewn empty lot between her apartment and the restaurant and turned it into a garden that would soon become the talk of the neighborhood. She cleaned up the plot and began to add deeply discounted forlorn plants from local nurseries and grocery stores. "Some are half dead, but I bring them back to life — that's part of the fun."

Powers and her garden today: Now she's got gorgeous 4-foot-tall red shrub roses, gray-green lamb's ear, coreopsis, sedum, heuchera, phlox and big red geraniums. A clematis clambers up a piece of an old iron fence in one corner and a pair of big ornamental grasses sit toward the back. A small cafe table with an umbrella and two chairs sits right in the middle.

In fall, Powers likes to plant tulips and other bulbs for the following spring. She's also teaching a few of the neighborhood kids how to grow things, making them responsible for certain plants in her garden. And she sometimes goes back to women's shelters to tell her story and offer support. "I try to give back by helping others," she says.

"I get a lot of anonymous donations, too," she says, pointing out day lilies and hostas, even a stone cherub from an estate.

What it means to me: "My garden gives me hope. I started it starting over from scratch," she says. "I can identify that with myself. Here I can make something beautiful out of nothing — and I have the strength and the power to do it. There's something about nature and God's creation that touches my heart," she says.

Gardening and Grief
Rita Kokkoris, Cortlandt Manor

Gardening got me through ... losing my husband. In 2008, Rita's husband, Michael developed a relentless cough and was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. It had already spread to his brain. Rita became Michael's caretaker, helping him every evening into the garden, where he'd enjoy the day lilies, flowering quince, sundrops, marigolds, astilbes and long rows and tidy clumps of hostas — the couple's first plant — that they often counted for fun. Michael died Feb. 3, 2009, just seven months after diagnosis. He was 58.

Healing hostas: That first spring and summer without Michael, she hardly planted anything. "There were days when I thought I couldn't get out of bed," she says — and the garden was full of reminders of Michael. "There were no marigolds planted outside the gate that spring and I honestly didn't care how many hostas we had in the yard," she remembers. Rita still misses Michael terribly, especially on weekday mornings, when he would be in the garden by 5 before work, chopping away at clumps of hostas. Fortunately, a year after her husband's death, Rita found her way back to the garden. "I find gardening very cathartic that way," she says. "I love digging in the dirt, always have — and it was something we liked to do together." She's even started counting her hostas again.

Rita and her garden today: This summer, Rita has taken to gardening with her Yorktown friend Anne Anderson, who also recently lost her husband (also named Michael) to cancer. It gave her great joy to divide a few of the hostas she shared with her Michael and give them to Anderson for her garden. "Right away, they looked like they'd always been there. And now a piece of Michael lives in Yorktown," Rita says with a smile.

What it means to me: "This is my serenity garden," says Rita, who has become quite handy with a sharp spade and a fat clump of hostas. "There must be close to 600 now," she says.

The Give-Back Gardener
Bob Herridge, Armonk

Gardening got me through ... the empty days of retirement and offered me a real way to say, 'thank you' to Burke Rehabilitation Hospital in White Plains. After 15 years of pain and discomfort from two bum knees, Herridge had replacement surgery on both legs in 2007. He was sent to Burke for a week or so of in-hospital recovery and rehab and another three months of out-patient treatment. His knees are like new again and he's just crazy about the care he got at Burke. "They did so much for me," says Herridge, about Burke's nurses and therapists. "They treated me like I was the only one there. It just overwhelmed me."

A greenhouse as payback: A lifelong gardener, Herridge thought he could use his green thumb to help other patients as well as the staff who had helped him. These days, he shows up at Burke every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7 a.m., to single-handedly run the patients' greenhouse, tending to the hundreds of plants in the 24-by-40-foot glass house. He's logged some 1,500 hours as a volunteer in the last couple of years.

In knee deep: Before Herridge arrived, the greenhouse's louvered windows wouldn't open and the floor was a wet, slippery mix of wooden boards and cracked concrete, certainly not suitable for patients in wheelchairs. He shut down the operation and rebuilt from scratch. Today, the floor is solid, smooth concrete and all of the side ventilation windows open easily. The benches and planting beds sit at wheelchair height, and as part of their occupational therapy, patients stop in to learn about gardening. Sometimes, they even pot up a few plants to take back to their rooms.

Herridge and his garden today: Thanks to Herridge, the greenhouse is full of citrus trees, begonias, snake plants, cactuses, geraniums and petunias. And now that he has the greenhouse under control, he's working on other parts of the hospital: Many of the hallways are now decorated with big pots of asparagus fern, spider plant, begonia and wandering Jew, all made from cuttings and seeds from a few mother plants in the greenhouse. For the holidays, Herridge makes wreaths at home and hangs them around the hospital. He also grows about 50 hanging baskets for the hospital's annual sale in early May. Most recently, he created a charming and colorful outdoor garden and sitting area for the staff.

What it means to me: Herridge loves being a gardener at Burke. "You have to give back," he says. "I got a whole new life because of them." Indeed, in more ways than one.

Living Through It
Bill O'donnell, Harrison

Gardening got me through ... living with recurring non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

When O'Donnell was first diagnosed, back in 1998, the cancer had already progressed to a life-threatening Stage IV. "What can I tell you — I've got nine lives," he says with a smile and a shrug. Over the next two years, he underwent 14 grueling cycles of chemotherapy. But in February 2002, his cancer returned and O'Donnell went through several more rounds of chemo and radiation — to no avail. The following year, his doctors even tried a bone marrow transplant to bring him back to good health. Alas, the transplant and other treatments left him with tremors in his hands and memory loss and an incurable blood disorder known as MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome). The one constant in this unremitting medical nightmare — aside from the loving care of his wife, Rochelle, and two daughters, Shannon and Brittany — is gardening.

Garden salvation: "You've got to stay busy," O'Donnell says. "You've got to keep your mind busy. I'm here all alone all day — either in my own head, yelling and screaming — or doing something. And gardening was a good thing for me to do." "It's been a great escape for him and a great outlet," says Rochelle, who teaches fourth grade at Harrison Avenue Elementary School in Harrison. "It kind of breathes life back into him when he's at a real low."

O'Donnell and his garden today: This summer, despite ongoing cancer treatments that leave him weak and diminished, he's gone back to mowing his own lawn and taking care of the yard. Instead of the expected old stand-bys like forsythia and juniper, O'Donnell created colorful garden beds, retaining walls and terraces. It's still a tidy suburban lot, but he's added so many new plants and cut back on the expected grass on all sides of the house. A former pachysandra bed in front now holds spirea, bluestem grass and dwarf burning bush. What was once a typical side-yard lawn is now a huge hosta bed, accented with 'Georgia Peach' heuchera, lamb's ear and andromeda — loads of color even in the middle of a hot, hot summer. In back, a new terraced, three-tiered planting area — all done by hand by O'Donnell — holds yarrow, blanket flower, liatris, yucca and sedum.

What it means to me: "It's the one thing that's kept me sane," he says. [0x0b]

Nurturing Soil and Soul
Gloria Bisaccia, Yonkers

Gardening got me through ... caring for my ailing mother.

Gloria Bisaccia tears up when she talks about her mother. After living with the Bisaccias for six years, 94-year-old Lena Follieri fell and fractured her pelvis four years ago and has been living at the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale ever since.

"She's been in a wheelchair these last few months," Bisaccia says. "It's so hard on us, so hard on her."

These days, Bisaccia finds comfort in her garden. "It's our sanctuary back here — I absolutely love it," she says. Her own garden isn't the only one that soothes her. She also works as a volunteer guide at the 28-acre Wave Hill public garden in Riverdale. "Going there is a vacation for me," she says. "I go there whenever I need a timeout, or something soothing for my soul."

Garden salvation: Bisaccia goes to see her mother every day — sometimes two or three times — and she tries to bring her cuttings of whatever is in bloom in her garden. Some days it's bouquets of purple hydrangea and pink and apricot rose blossoms, or perhaps it's purple coneflower and cuttings from the white butterfly bush. Or it might just be fresh iPhone photos of her garden.

"Mom's not able to come back home for a visit to enjoy the peonies or roses, so I take them to her," Bisaccia says. After visits to the nursing home, she loves to walk and meditate in her shady garden. Sometimes she likes to go up to the upper bluestone terrace to sit quietly with a cup of coffee. "It's a great escape up here," she says.

Never too late to garden: Follieri, in turn, has gotten very involved in the Hebrew Home's garden therapy program, learning to grow things and enjoying freshly potted plants on her windowsill. There's great irony here, Bisaccia points out with a laugh. "My mother never gardened — she never really enjoyed being in a garden."

Bisaccia and her garden today: Her wonderful garden fills every inch of her Yonkers back yard. All you see is garden when you stand in her great room, looking up at a hillside of beautiful plantings and stone walls and sloping walkways: long-blooming perennials like black-eyed Susan and astilbe, lace-leafed Japanese maple trees, yew hedges, lilacs, peonies, soft mosses, old-fashioned roses, hostas and white-blooming dogwoods.

What it means to me: "We talk about downsizing, but I can't give up the garden," she says. "You get so connected to a garden. I like to say it's a spirit of place." Indeed, it's got just the right sort of spirituality to nurture the soul — and the soil. "Nurturing is what my mother did," Bisaccia says. "I like to think she passed that legacy down to me."

http://www.lohud.com/article/20100725/LIFESTYLE01/7250342/1164/ENTERTAINMENT/Five%20local%20growers%20who%20garden%20through%20crisis.