BELFAST — Bob and Marsha Siviski, who moved to Belfast in 2019, have more than 70 years of gardening experience between them. Their considerable expertise will be on view Saturday, July 8, when the Belfast Garden Club features the couple’s in-town garden as part of its summer event series, Open Garden Days.
The Siviskis’ garden at 71 Cedar Street in Belfast will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine. Admission is $5. It is the third of nine private gardens the club is showcasing this summer on Saturdays through Aug. 19.
When Bob Siviski retired as a clinical and school psychologist in southern Maine in 2019, he and his wife, Marsha, a speech-language pathologist, began looking for a new home in a place with a sense of community. That turned out to be Belfast. In their first year, the newcomers renovated the interior of their home, in the second they tackled the garden.
“Bob began with moving stone walls, recovering a trove of buried stone, and ultimately he elevated an historic well stone to create a walled backyard patio and entertainment area,” says Marsha Siviski, who retired in 2021.
Highlights of the Siviskis’ redeveloped landscape include shade gardens dominated by oak and Japanese lilac trees, pollinating plants, several varieties of foxgloves, and everbearing and summer-bearing raspberries.
“A raised-bed vegetable garden in the rear of the property will give visitors ample opportunity to explore vertical gardening with the creative use of birdcages and other repurposed items,” Siviski says.
For 30 years in Falmouth, the Siviskis had tended extensive perennial and vegetable gardens on a four-acre farm. Their urban garden is small by comparison, but no less interesting. “The third year of the garden is typically a delight,” Siviski says.
For more on the Open Garden Days schedule, visit belfastgardenclub.org. A season pass may be purchased for $35. Proceeds support the garden club’s school programs, camp scholarships, library donations, and Belfast’s public gardens.