How Her Garden Grows: Lyn Snyder
Lyn Snyder and her garden are inspirations for anyone starting out in gardening. She didn’t grow up with gardening parents or grandparents. Lyn claims her mother could kill a silk plant. However, as an international flight attendant enjoying layovers in Paris, London and Frankfurt, she was amazed and delighted by the voluptuous public parks and gardens of these cities and thrilled by the vivid flowers in window boxes of the houses.
These visions were part of her psyche when she purchased her home and started gardening in her early 50’s. Her first attempts to replace dead grass and dead trees failed. She simply didn’t understand right plant for right location, the climate cycles in Dallas, or the necessity of properly preparing the soil.
Because she was still flying for American Airlines and starting a successful high-end wedding business, she hired a gardener who slowly brought the lawn back to life. Gradually four dead trees were removed and replaced with crepe myrtles to add shade and color. With the help of the gardener, Lyn began to replace and replant prioritizing the areas that were the most barren or crying the loudest for attention. Lyn drove through many diverse Dallas neighborhoods finding ideas about design and plants for her own garden.
Lyn scopes out sales to scoop up stray plants and garden art.
After she retired from flying, she attended Master Gardener training becoming a Dallas County Master Gardener in 2013. With her trial-and-error learning, on-line research, and the lectures in the MG classroom, Lyn was super charged to create the gorgeous garden you’ll find on the 2022 Garden Tour. She found motivation and confidence from her Master Gardener training to tackle her corner-lot garden and patio areas with gusto, determination and knowledge.
Lyn is truly the “Thrifty Gardener”. She joined garden clubs and the American Rose Society – lapping up plants as door prizes or bingo winnings. She left one Rose Society meeting excited to rip out a lawn area, prepare it with mulch and cardboard, and plant the area with her free plants.
Lyn checks the sales racks in the back of Lowe’s nursery section for bargains that others miss. She gladly finds a spot for plants that neighbors and friends are giving away, never turning down an opportunity to add more color. She scopes out estate sales to rescue plants that are about to be demolished and to find unique heirloom garden art to accent her flower gardens. She can’t resist adding one more wind chime to the Hospital Tree where wind chimes go waiting to be mended. Her advice to novice gardeners is: “You can do this! It doesn’t take a lot of money. Listen to veteran gardeners and heed their advice. Take classes to advance your skills. Enjoy playing in the dirt.”
This creativity and love of color makes Lyn’s garden a fun and fascinating delight with an enormous variety of plants. There are shrub roses from David Austin and Star, as well as ld garden roses purchased twelve years ago from Chamblee Nursery. Lyn has a prize McFarland rose with very full pink blossoms. There are beds of iris and another overflowing with summer phlox. A new bed is planted with hydrangeas, echinacea, asters, and lantana.
Lyn is anxiously awaiting the arrival of a Blue Bird Rose of Sharon, Hibiscus syriacus, and a climbing fragrant Peggy Martin rose to be planted together. Amid this glow of color, Lyn urges visitors to pay attention to the varied array of plants and the garden art because they all come with a story. You won’t want to miss a thing.
Lyn Snyder’s garden is one of seven that will be featured on the 2022 Spring Garden Tour presented by the Dallas County Master Gardener Association on Saturday, April 30 (10 am-4 pm), and Sunday, May 1 (1-5 pm).
Betsy See has been a certified Master Gardener since 2017. She leads the Garden Team at Geneva Heights Elementary School and is working as a lieutenant to Nancy Black on the 2022 Garden Tour. After participating in the 2021 Advanced Tree Training offered by Tarrant County Master Gardener Association, she’s fixated on learning more about trees and doing more to protect our trees in Dallas County.
