Flower-filled garden awarded Yard of Month for fifth time

Award-winning color

Sam Brizendine stands with Krackers the dog in his garden on Tanner Bridge Road. Sam and his wife Mary are five-time recipients of the Yard of the Month award. The Brizendines have lived at the home for nearly 50 years and been adjusting the garden ever since. Most recently, they've planted around 300 sunpatiens, which provide lots of color to the lot.
Sam Brizendine stands with Krackers the dog in his garden on Tanner Bridge Road. Sam and his wife Mary are five-time recipients of the Yard of the Month award. The Brizendines have lived at the home for nearly 50 years and been adjusting the garden ever since. Most recently, they've planted around 300 sunpatiens, which provide lots of color to the lot.

The quaint neighborhood on Tanner Bridge Road has changed a lot in the nearly 50 years Sam and Mary Brizendine have lived on the tight curb.

What has been a constant, at least for the last several decades, is beautiful colors brimming in their backyard.

The couple has been named the Yard of the Month by the Bittersweet Garden Club and Central Missouri Master Gardeners for the fifth time, owed greatly to their hundreds of blooming sunpatiens.

"This yard boasts so much color ... could be a part of a Disney World production!" one judge said.

That's not to say it's always been that way. The couple has worked hard, repairing erosion, testing different plantings and constantly watering their annuals.

They even maintain their next-door neighbor's front yard.

This year's sunpatiens have grown faster and taller than any previous year's, Mary said.

"From the mailbox to the end of the backyard, there are pots and hanging baskets and plantings of every imaginable color of sun impatiens," another judge said.

The couple enjoys the long-lasting color through to frost.

Before they discovered sunpatiens about 20 years ago, the Brizendines had tried begonias, marigolds and other annuals for color.

But nothing has been as satisfying as these plants - about 300 of them.

The first year they planted sunpatiens, "nobody else knew what they were, so there was a good selection from local greenhouses," Mary said. "They've caught on now."

The sunpatiens do require a lot of water.

Sam spends about two hours every day watering and twice as much time on days when the temperature is above 90 degrees.

"In the summertime, we do nothing but work in the yard," Mary said.

Since last receiving the Yard of the Month award in October 2011, the Brizendines filled in a washed out area behind their shed - a project they put off for 48 years, Sam said.

In addition to solving the erosion problem, they added three more flower beds in the back of their lot.

"The yard is done; I'm not doing anymore," Mary said.