Teri Condon’s garden (photo by Ken Garcens and Terry Decker)
Spotlight: Teri Condon’s Highland Garden
When you talk to people who have a passion for gardening, more often than not it turns out that they’ve been involved with it since childhood, and grew up surrounded by family members who passed on their own love of gardening. Teri Condon of Highland is no exception. Her grandmothers and her father were gardeners back in Iowa where she grew up and her mom is an avid gardener.
Condon remembers the garden at the first house her family lived in. “We moved out when I was in second grade, but I still remember the fishpond and all the places where we hid out as kids. One of the places happened to be this lilac forest, super overgrown, with a hollow in there to hide in.”
Today Condon has her own landscape design and installation business. She started Gardensmith Design in 1985. The name of the company is meant to play off the idea that just as a blacksmith works iron to create a product, a “Gardensmith” is working the land to create a garden.
Her own garden in Highland will be opened to the public on Saturday, June 15 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. as part of the “Open Days” program sponsored by The Garden Conservancy, a national organization that works to preserve gardens and inspire the public about the design, care and sustainability of gardens. One of the ways they do this is through the annual Open Days program, partnering with people like Condon who have an exceptional private garden and bringing the public in for the day to appreciate it and, perhaps, become inspired.
