“I never sit still,” says Donna Sawyer. “Never, never, never. Many nights I do not come in from the garden ’til eleven.”

And all her hard work is evident in the 20 gardens at Cliffwood, the Limington home Donna shares with her husband, Cliff.

I met with Donna recently to talk about her passion for gardening and to get a few tips from this wise and funny, self-taught gardener who some of you may recognize as the planning secretary from Standish Town Hall or the gardening instructor for Windham adult education.

Donna grew up in Swanville, Maine – ten miles inland from Belfast. Maybe it was there, in her log cabin playhouse near a plot of sweet william, that her fascination with flowers first began. But in the early 1970s, it grew from fascination to determination when Donna and Cliff moved into their new home.

Despite her best intentions, Donna’s first three gardens failed. But in 1978 she bought Jim Crockett’s book, Perennials: “I read it cover to cover every spring for the next five years.”

Her determination has paid off. Today, their two-plus acre site is a patchwork of 20 different flower gardens exploding with color, texture, and scent.

While an attractive, well-tended garden may look easy and natural, anyone who practices this backbreaking activity knows how much work goes into making it look effortless. Donna’s least favorite gardening chore is raking up all the leaves that fall into the flowerbeds. She hires someone to do this and is currently looking for a new person, saying she’s willing to “teach him or her the trade from the ground up.”

But she doesn’t hesitate to dig into other garden activities. A few years ago, she even dug the trench for an underground sprinkler system that her husband then plumbed. The two designed the system to water all 20 gardens.

Donna has two favorite pieces of advice for new gardeners:

The first she calls the three S’s. If you’re creating your first garden, make it small, make it simple, and make it successful.

And the second: Don’t take just any plant that someone wants to give you. If they want to give it to you, it means it’s probably taken over their garden and it will take over yours. Donna calls those plants, thugs. “They’re like bullies – they will muscle out the rest of your garden.” Unless you can look the plant up in a book and identify it as a plant you’d like to have, pass it up.

Donna’s favorite plants include hostas, daylilies, and cushion spurge. She likes the large-leaved and variegated hosta varieties. One of her favorites is sagae, a six-foot wide, green and yellow-leaved variety that turns silvery gray-green with creamy white margins later in the season. Her other favorite hosta is blue mouse ears, a new mini variety with blue-green leaves that grows only one foot wide.

Her favorite daylily is an old variety called prairie moonlight. The plant is nocturnal so its fragrant, yellow blossoms stay open until midnight.

As Donna and I spoke, sitting indoors to escape the pounding rain, I could tell she was itching to get outside once again. And when I was leaving, which was when the rain decided to leave as well, she came out with me to work in her wet, wet garden, determined to spend some time in the place she loves best.

Cliffwood Gardens will be open to the public this Sunday, July 24, with all donations going to the Bonny Eagle scholarship fund. For more information, visit her Web site, www.cliffwoodgardens.com, or call 637-2675.

I will be featuring area gardens and gardeners in my upcoming columns. If you would like to be considered, please contact me – I love visiting gardens.

Donna Sawyer is surrounded by clouds of rose mallow at Cliffwood Gardens. Her gardens in Limington are open to the public on Sunday, July 24, to benefit the Bonny Eagle scholarship fund.

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