As caretaker to the Botanical Cactus Garden at the Ethel M Chocolate factory in Henderson, Steve Bowdoin knows it is a matter of when, not if, he will get pricked by needle – especially as he prepares the garden for the annual holiday light display.

No matter how careful Bowdoin and his three-man team are, wrapping lights around cactuses is hazardous.

And none of that really bothers Bowdoin. He enjoys what he does.

The joy he brings to the thousands of people who visit the garden each holiday season compensates for the pain inflicted by the cactuses.

“It’s fun and crazy all at the same time,” he said.

Bowdoin said his work kind of makes him a goodwill ambassador for the garden.

“I talk to 200-300 people a day,” he said.

It takes 960 man hours and nearly 175 pairs of gloves for Bowdoin and his crew to hang more than half a million lights – 503,000 to be precise – that transform the Botanical Cactus Gardens into a colorful holiday wonderland.

This year, Bowdoin added 3,000 bulbs to the display, all of which are LED so they will appear brighter and use less energy.

In addition, he has several new figurines and five inflatable displays, including Green, who joins Yellow and Red, the popular MM’s characters.

“No matter how hard I try to seclude them in the cactus, people go up and hug them,” Bowdoin said.

A less dangerous opportunity to hug the characters would be to visit on Fridays and Saturdays when life-size MM’s roam the gardens and interact with guests, he added.

Bowdoin said the figurines and inflatables give the gardens some holiday atmosphere during the daylight hours for those who cannot visit at night when the lights are on. He hopes, however, that it will entice visitors to return after the sun sets.

Among the new figurines this year are several LED-lighted pelicans.

“They were cool so we will try them out. If you are from Florida, they will fit right in,” he said with a mischievous grin and lamenting the fact that he could not find any lighted, wire-frame penguins.

Work on the holiday light display begins in September when Bowdoin begins inventory and testing each bulb on his 100 palettes of lights and decorations.

“No matter how yard we try, there’s always one string, one strand, that doesn’t work,” he said.

The actually hanging of the lights begins in early October.

Bowdoin has the process so narrowed down that he can tell you exactly how many man hours it will take to complete the job and how his team is progressing at any time throughout the weeks the lights are being installed.

For example, on Friday, 10 days before the annual lighting, he still had 82 hours of work remaining and was six hours behind. And that was after making up two hours from the day before.

By tomorrow, all they will have left to complete is to bury all the cords and tidy up the gardens.

In reality, Bowdoin said it takes about six months of work to prepare the lights, hang them, unhang them and plan what will go where.

Bowdoin and his team begin installing the holiday lights on the ground cover and work their way up to the canopies of the trees.

One of the last areas to be completed is the gazebo where Santa makes his home for the duration of the holiday season. Bowdoin said he makes the special display different each year and it’s always a great surprise to garden visitors, as well as factory workers.

Taking the lights down is “not as stressful as putting them up,” he said.

Although it typically takes four to six weeks to take all the lights down, Bowdoin said they are not on as strict of a schedule to complete the task.

“If some trees lag behind, it is not as critical,” he said.

He said he also uses the time as an opportunity to prune the plants, especially the trees.

By February, all is quiet at the garden and Bowdoin and one other person maintain the grounds.

“It’s when the quail and lizards come back,” he said, imagining what they must think about the holiday spectacle and multitude of visitors.

The 19th annual Cactus Lighting event will take place Tuesday from 5- 8 p.m. at the three-acre garden adjacent to the chocolate factory. The countdown to the lighting will take place at about 6 p.m.

Those wishing to attend the cactus lighting event can receive a family four-pack of tickets by bringing a new, unwrapped toy to the chocolate factory no later than noon Tuesday. Tickets are limited and will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Toys collected at the factory will be donated in the annual KLUC-FM toy drive for distribution to needy children this holiday season.

The evening’s festivities will be hosted by comedian George Wallace, with entertainment by Zowie Bowie and Michael Grimm, a winner of “America’s Got Talent.” Additionally, there will be performances by local choirs, face painting, balloon artists, prize drawings and chocolate samples.

Pictures with Santa are free, but a professional photographer will be on hand offering images for $10 each.

Also, Ethel M will be selling hot chocolate and water for $1 each, with all proceeds benefiting Smile Train, an international charity that provides cleft palate surgery to those in need.

New this year, all guests at the lighting event will receive special 3-D glasses. With glasses, the attraction will come to life with special 3-D effects; they can be purchased for $2 throughout the season.

Santa Claus returns to the gardens Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 5 to 9 p.m. Also on weekends is entertainment by local choirs.

For those who would like to visit the gardens when it is a little less crowded, Bowdoin said Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are best.

Ligustrum japonicum

Photo by Michael Spencer

When designing a landscape, it’s important to consider plants in the mid story — the middle part of your garden that starts about 5 feet off the ground and goes up to about 15 to 20 feet. Mid-story plants help add stability and balance to the landscape.

Ligustrum japonicum | Ligustrum

Photo by Michael Spencer

ABOVE: Bougainvillea is a flowering plant that can add a pop of color to your mid-story landscape.

LEFT: Notice how this ligustrum japonicum adds balance between the low plants and the tall palm trees.

Assessing design and design process is one of those enterprises regarded as either simple or simplistic, chiefly by those not engaged in the exercise.While the process of design is second nature, writing about it has been a sometimes uphill endeavor. I find myself peeling away layers of my own efforts, asking myself why this or that, is done. For the most part observing my own process has been has been quite encouraging. But how to describe it to non-designers?

The middle

Since Aristotle is one of those timeless people needing no introduction, here is his take on a subtle truth about artistic excellence: the middle.

Speaking about plays, Aristotle said they are “a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.”

And as with so many things, once you read these words you realize the truth of it: It’s the middle that counts.

Now think about art class in school, where the teacher patiently explained to 11-year-olds the notion that drawings have a foreground, a midground and a background. Oddly, this idea was not discovered by the art world until quite late in history — imagine just about any Egyptian representation, or Greek, for that matter.

Egyptian carvings would have been cool with palm trees or sand dunes in the background, don’t you think?

Turn it over

You can rotate this notion, like this: background becomes “canopy,” and foreground becomes “ground plane.” And perhaps most importantly, the midground becomes “mid story.” This middle part of your garden, the part that starts perhaps 5 feet or so off the ground and goes up to 15 or 20 feet, is called the “mid story.” This is where your garden comes alive, because without the middle, it is not whole.

Many designers remember that a garden needs a canopy provided by shade trees (oaks, mahogany, black olive) or by large palms (royals, for example). These canopy plantings provide scale and shade, which is necessary on the ground plane. Think of the canopy as more than 30 feet in the air.

Shrubs, too, rarely escape attention. Shrubs are mostly 5 feet tall or less. Shrubs are what many neophytes focus attention on.

Inside the range

The mid story is the heart of your garden, populated largely by patio trees, multi-stem critters with no leaves below a small canopy, and there are dozens of examples. Among the larger patio trees are ligustum, seagrape, queen’s crape myrtle and senna (also called cassia and currently blooming with yellow flowers here in Southwest Florida). When a garden requires a smaller individual, consider jatropha, angel trumpet, pygmy date palm, or even Everglades palm (Paurotis), which is easily managed as either a large plant or a daintier individual.

The rules of design apply in your choice of mid-story plants: First, do no harm, which means horticultural requirements of the plant are the first factors to consider. Following suitability, your design is driven by texture, contrast and the other usual suspects that will help you make your choices.

Not just trees

The mid-story might be populated by garden objects other than plants — we don’t want any stifled creativity around here, do we? A large hanging staghorn fern, for example, is mid story. Those of you who appreciate statuary will find them creating a useful scale, depending on the piece. And an overhead trellis is mid story while providing shade and a place to hang vines.

As always I welcome your comments, feedback, or questions, and I answer all email: ms@msadesign.com.

Click photo to enlarge

EUREKA — The Eureka Sequoia Garden Club continues its Front Yard Landscape Contest this month with the naming of “Nine Garden Jewels on F Street.” Garden club members Anne Van Zandt and Mary Lou Goodwin viewed and evaluated all of the properties along F Street in Eureka.

If a property’s score was more than 90 out of 100 points, it was declared a contest winner. The evaluation form included points for use of plant materials, design principles evident, perfection of hardscapes and fences and maintenance.

Both Van Zandt and Goodwin are National Garden Club and California Garden Clubs Inc. trained landscape design consultants. The G Street awards continue the program that began in July and evaluated front yards on H Street. The committee obtained the property owners’ names and photos were taken of each property.

For more information on the Eureka Sequoia Garden Club, its activities and monthly programs, call Goodwin at 442-1387.

The nine Garden Jewels on F Street are listed below with descriptions written by Goodwin:

* A group of ‘Tree of Heaven’ trees are featured on the side of the terraced side hill beneath the modern home of Dottie Sweet at 4257 Fairway Drive (the continuation of F Street up to and beyond city limits). The area is planted with rosemary, heather, species geraniums, gerbera daisies and purple hebe. A walkway contains carriage lights on used brick posts with an understory of sculptured privot. The house is softened with

rhododendrons, azaleas, heaths and New Zealand tea tree for seasonal color.

* David and Josephine Tom’s Southern California Tudor located at 2333 F St. greets visitors with a front porch trimmed in brick. The ceramic containers hold bamboo and succulents. Blue agapanthus, pink escallonia, stylized juniper and rhododendrons are contained in the brick border with some boulders for accents. The corner lot features a flowering cherry tree.

* The Dutch style home at 3132 F St. is the residence of Dr. Joanna Marcuz. Fences that are low and solid hold the white arbor over the walkway to the brick porch with ceramic containers of miniature junipers. Genevieve Schmidt Landscape Design created the collection of viburnum with tri-colored leaves, alstromeria, Japanese iris, heavenly bamboo (nandina), purple species geraniums, fuchsia and summer-blooming dahlias. The corners feature a red Japanese maple and mature rhododendrons.

* The home at 4290 F St. is an example of the use of brick in yard design. It is featured in the driveway in a patterned design with slabs of inset concrete. The front yard has a circular form with brick edges and heather, juniper and boulders as accents in them. The mid-century home of William Bachelor starts on the street with photenia, trimmed juniper, pine tree, agapanthus and camellia. The geometric fence supports an Oriental-style arbor surrounded by nandina (heavenly bamboo) and the brick walkway goes to the front door.

* Tom and Mona Genter live in the modern Mediterranean home at 4409 Fairway Drive. The red geraniums on the windowsill complement the red tile roof. The side hill lawn features a dracaena tree and is accented by boulders, blue agapanthus, geraniums, yellow day lilies, purple Japanese iris, lavender, nandina and mock orange. The front porch presents a Meyer lemon in a container and the roadside garden is flush with ever-blooming pink and lavender heathers.

* An escallonia hedge near the sidewalk provides a frame for the Dr. Brian and Nancy Craig saltbox home at 2524 F St. A lighted walkway welcomes guests to the porch with the topiaries in containers. The front yard contains rhododendrons, heaths, geraniums, bush roses and deciduous trees around the lawn. The side yard is accented by a rose-covered arbor, while seating in this secluded garden surrounded by junipers and privot hedges is enjoyed on a sunny day.

* The 2613 F St. bungalow of Carl and Kim Regalo presents petunias in many ways. The annuals are in window boxes, porch boxes and hanging baskets. The walkway is trimmed with boulders, hen-and-chicks succulents and different colored mosses. The colorful borders that are around the lawn hold roses, rosemary, calla lily, hydrangeas, fuchsia and flowering maples.

* The Early Victorian residence of Ritchie and Dianne Phillips at 930 F St. can be seen from the street through the white picket fence with rose bushes marking the gate. The front of the house contains blue hydrangea and purple ‘Martha Washington’ pelargoniums. A speckled gravel-and-concrete walkway and driveway leads to the blue porch with decorative hand rails that complements the light green house. The borders contain hybrid tea, grandiflora and shrub roses. Canna, geraniums, alstromeria and fuchsia combine with a large flowering cheery tree. Alyssum is a ground cover beneath all of the flowers.

* Duncan Consulting at 3015 F St. is in an original Henderson Center residence. The front yard is a mass of blooming lavender during the summer. Rosemary and heathers are used as a ground cover and New Zealand tea shrub and heaths frame the front door of the brick porch. A mature tree, blue agapanthus and calla lilies complete the scene.