Letting his garden do the talking

It's mostly green, with few annuals and little color beyond accents of tropical hibiscus, with their oversized coral and yellow blooms, an orange lantana tree, American wisteria, and some striking, Moroccan-blue containers.

But you don't miss color. There's too much else going on.

"I have a lot of ideas. I just try to use nature," says Hasson, whose method goes something like this: "I get a rock or piece of wood. I look at it for quite a while. I follow what I see and just do what I want to do."

Which is pretty good advice, when you think about it, if you're rethinking a life.

Ventnor City Garden Tour

The Ventnor City Garden Tour is scheduled 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Rain date is Sunday.

Sponsored by the two-year-old Ventnor City Beautification Committee, the self-guided tour covers 25 gardens around the city. Tickets are $12 and can be reserved in advance by calling 609-214-9591 or 609-822-2897 or purchased the same day for $15 at the Ventnor Branch Library, 6500 Atlantic Ave.

Once you pick up your tickets at the library, you will get a hand stamp and a map showing the gardens, sponsoring merchants, and bathroom facilities.

The tour, Ventnor's first, will showcase a variety of gardens - vegetable, flower, sculpture, formal English style, and naturalistic, and all points in between. It's designed to raise money for plantings around the city.

One of the beautification committee's first projects this year was to plant flowers in a donated lifeguard boat. The boat is displayed on Wellington Avenue, at one of the major entrances to Ventnor.

- Virginia A. Smith

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Contact garden writer Virginia A. Smith at 215-854-5720 or vsmith@phillynews.com.