GROW AND TELL: Couple’s garden reveals teamwork

Consider Barbara and Don Fabbi's relationship a mixed marriage: She takes care of the flowers in the couple's home garden, while he takes care of the vegetables.

And, at the risk of stretching the metaphor a tad too painfully: The garden they have created is a mixed one, too, because it contains flowers and vegetables growing side by side in the same beds.

Don Fabbi has been gardening since 1946, when his family moved from Tonopah to Las Vegas. But even before then, he recalls the Victory Garden that his father maintained.

Since retiring from Nevada Power Co. in 1996, Don has devoted much of his free time to educating others about -- and creating support for -- gardening in Southern Nevada.

"My biggest thing now is community gardens," he says. "I work with five different city community gardens."

At home, he and Barbara maintain their own garden in raised beds, which are, he notes, a good way for beginning gardeners to bypass the valley's unwelcoming soil.

"It's a continuous length of raised bed, and then we interplant," he says. "She does flowers, and I do the veggies and fruit trees and stuff like that. She does roses, but I like asparagus, so we grow asparagus between the roses."

On the vegetable side, there are potatoes and tomatoes and zucchinis and cucumbers, as well as such exotic-sounding-for-Las Vegas plants as blueberries, sugar cane, cotton, peanuts and even, he says, a fairly recently planted banana tree that's now "about a foot tall."

On the flower side of the ledger, Barbara says, "we've got kind of a little English garden with delphiniums. We've got a lot of roses all over. And I've got some daisies and some hibiscus, and out front we have a lot of snapdragons and a few pansies."

Barbara says she selects flowers for the garden in part with an eye toward including a mix of annuals and perennials and looks for plants that bloom at different times. She also doesn't shy away from planting flowers that will provide a welcome burst of color for only a limited time.

For example, she says, "we also put in a couple of hydrangea bushes which probably won't be coming back, but it's fun to enjoy them now."

Don encourages anyone with an interest in gardening to simply give it a try.

"You can grow anything here if you know the rules," he says, "and the biggest challenge of living here in Las Vegas is our soil."

Raised bed and container gardening can increase beginners' chances of success. And, he adds, "start small. That way, you don't have as much invested if you have a collapse."

Most of all: Don't worry too much about doing something wrong.

"I've made lots of mistakes," Don says.

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@review journal.com or 702-383-0280.