By Virginia M. Wright
Photos by Jamie Mercurio
From our July 2025 issue
Jane Donelon was an ardent gardener when she moved to a Brunswick subdivision 50 years ago. Nevertheless, her quarter-acre lot intimidated her. “It’s got hills in front of the house, hills on the sides, and a hill — and bog! — in back,” she says. “That was all new to me. I thought, ‘Oh my, what am I going to do?’” Before long, though, her apprehension gave way to a sense of adventure, and she fell in love with the diverse environment surrounding her shingled Cape. “It’s just a tiny plot, but it’s got a lot of different types of gardening opportunities,” she says. “The things that overwhelmed me in the beginning have become my favorites.”
The landscape had been a blank slate — mostly lawn with a big Crimson King maple and, behind the bog, a mound of deciduous trees. All that remains of the lawn today is a grassy path wending among flower beds planted in Donelon’s free-spirited style. The short sandy slope that descends to the street is home to “easy things that can go crazy” — sedums, Joe Pye weeds, great blue lobelias, gayfeathers, butterfly weeds, bee balms, and Astrantia. In the clay-soil borders that frame the house, clematises climb unrestrained over rhododendrons, rose bushes, tree peonies, and weeping tamaracks. The bog is swarmed with euphorbias, Japanese primroses, globeflowers, marsh marigolds, snakeroots, meadowsweets, ferns, and hostas, and the elevated woodland is dotted with Solomon’s seals and azaleas. Even the front entry’s portico is a garden: two vines — a chocolate-scented Akebia quinata and a male kiwi — converge on the roof in a tumbling cloud of blue-green foliage that, in spring, is stippled with white and magenta flowers.
Donelon learned how to cultivate her unfamiliar terrain by touring gardens here and abroad. “That really changed my gardening because I got into growing clematises like mad on every bush, tree, or thing that I could,” she says. Her adult children, Jean and Jim Herlihy, are both avid gardeners and have contributed to the lot’s transformation. Jean, who gardens professionally in the Brunswick area, created a backyard wildflower circle on Mother’s Day many years ago. It contains Donelon’s earliest and longest-blooming flower, a Winter Rose hellebore that buds in late December and retains its white and pale-pink blooms into May. Jim, a lawyer who gardens at his New Jersey home after work wearing a headlamp, blazed his mother’s woodland path and built its driftwood gate.
Donelon and Jean are well-known in local gardening circles for their Plants for Peace sale, which marked its 38th, and final, anniversary last year. For one hour on one day every spring, they sold their surplus plants from Jane’s driveway at dirt-cheap prices, donating the proceeds to organizations that promote nonviolence and cooperation. “It’s been a very fun event in my life,” says Donelon, who reluctantly called it quits last year because, at age 88, she’s “running out of energy.”
A retired special-education teacher, Donelon says the sale made her a more knowledgeable gardener because she aimed to inform buyers about the plants they were taking home. “I love working with new gardeners and giving them easy-to-grow plants like Siberian irises and daylilies, and I love working with experienced gardeners who are looking for unusual plants,” she says. “Gardening has brought joy to my life, and I’m always eager to spread it.”
Jane Donelon’s garden is featured on the Brunswick in Bloom Garden Tour, on July 19, 2025. Tickets are available at oasisfreeclinics.org.
