Olde Towne Daphne gardener Susan Roberts and her husband Jerry made quite the lifestyle change two years ago when they left their over 5,000-square-foot country home in Vancleave, Mississippi and built a charming 1,400-square-foot cottage in the heart of Daphne.

"We just love it here," Susan shares. "The people are all so very nice — I open my door to find neighbors bringing over pumpkin muffins or telling me to go and dig up all the cast iron plants I want. When my husband, who is a contractor, was building our home and getting necessary permits, everyone was so helpful and even came to check on us to see if we needed anything as we were building. That is a rare thing to find."

Susan and Jerry, along with their dogs, Gracie and Ruby, and cat, Blossom, have settled in nicely since their arrival. Jerry intentionally designed and built the house to look like an old cottage nestled into the shady streets of Olde Towne Daphne. Their yard looks far more established and mature than the short time they have been there.

"We had a huge yard with high-maintenance plants in Mississippi," Susan says. "I wanted plants here that didn't require much care or pruning. I love old-fashioned daylilies — the orange kind that grow in ditches — and clematis. I love the variety you find with both in colors and shapes and they are low maintenance. And with clematis, the bloom keeps getting bigger and bigger."

The purple clematis Susan loves is featured prominently in containers, up trellises or wound around old fences throughout the garden.

Clematis is popular with other gardeners as well. Mainly of Chinese and Japanese origin, over 250 species and cultivars of this vigorous woody flowering vine are known. Clematis leaves provide food for caterpillars, and Susan uses the larger-flowered specimens in her garden design to climb archways, pergolas, trellises and even what she calls an unsightly telephone pole in her front yard. Besides the unusual blue/violet flowers, clematis also flowers in red, pink or white.

"I believe your garden is an extension of the house and should be welcoming when we come home — as well as to walkers or passers-by," she says.

The front yard with its cottage-fence border is planted — both inside and out of the fence line — with blooming containers and small perennial beds.

Along with Susan's favorite daylilies and purple clematis, the garden boasts red pentas, dwarf and oakleaf hydrangeas, azaleas, camellias, vincas, dragon-wing begonias and hibiscus to cheer all who enter in or pass by. A fast-growing passionflower is another favorite of Susan's.

"I love anything that blooms," she says. "I think it's a Southern thing."

Jerry also helps with gardening chores after the couple runs together. Along with the citrus trees, he keeps an eye on their heirloom Black Cherokee tomatoes, thriving blueberry, blackberry and raspberry patches, squash, peppers and a cherished transplanted persimmon tree.

"After only a year," Susan boasts, "we harvested eight gallons of raspberries."

This retired high school math teacher finds the familiar gardening chores of weeding and watering therapeutic.

"As long as I don't have to spend much time trimming and shaping up things, I enjoy working in my garden in the late afternoons when I get home," Susan says.

This talented gardener began her love of planting as she helped her grandmother grow things as a 5-year-old.

"I helped her pot up flowers and she taught me not to plant too much because you have to take care of it," Susan shares with a smile. "I still have a plant from her even though she has been gone for 10 years."

Susan Roberts considers herself and Jerry to be the lucky ones as they live and garden in this genteel town by the bay they so love. But Olde Towne Daphne is fortunate, too, to count among its citizens gardeners that plant not only for their own enjoyment, but for the entire town to savor as well.