The Gardens at the Gazebo on the Green have hosted weddings for 28 years

Mary Ellen Hill cares for 14 unique gardens at The Gardens at Gazebo on the Green, and each of them comes with a story.

'I call these gardens a love story,” she said.

They were a gift from her husband, John, when he retired, some 28 years ago. Nestled in rolling hills just north of Iowa City, these 33 acres of flowers and foliage have played host to hundreds of tours, teas and weddings since 1989.

That was the year Hill told her husband the gift she wanted was a sunshine garden - her backyard gardens had always been shady, and she wanted a place to plant more than hostas. The land was an overgrown abandoned farm when the Hills bought it and began clearing space for Mary Ellen's first garden.

'The one garden was all I was ever going to do - the Sunshine Garden,” she said.

She had owned a downtown Iowa City gift shop called The Gazebo on the Green, and she was ready to retire alongside her husband.

'I wanted to get out and be a hermit,” she said.

But then a couple bought their wedding flowers from her gift shop and asked if they could get married at the garden. She had a gazebo built for them to say their vows under, picturing a small ceremony. She wasn't pleased when she learned around 300 guests would show up, but the wedding was a success. It launched another career that she hasn't left to this day.

'The following Monday, the phone started ringing,” Hill said. 'And just like that I was back in business. I said, ‘To heck with being a hermit.'”

The gardens grew and multiplied over the years. Most couples get married in her Neoclassical Romantic Garden, but other gardens include the Southern Courtyard, the English County Perennial, and the Gathering Place.

'All the gardens are themed and built on something that happened in my life,” she said.

The most precious to her is John's Garden, which she cultivated in memory of her husband after he died in 2001.

Friends and family gifted her with plants, flowers, trees and shrubs as memorials. She planted them around a small garden house she calls the Tea Time Cottage, in reference to a daily tradition they shared. Every evening, he would call her in from the gardens for a glass of wine - he called it their tea time.

The couple met when they were professional musicians - she an opera singer and he a trombonist. They met in Washington, D.C., when she sang at the Cherry Blossom Festival and he played in the U.S. Air Force Symphony Orchestra. Eventually they moved to Iowa, where he taught in the University of Iowa School of Music.

She said she misses her husband every day, but working on John's Garden is therapeutic.

'I think probably the gardens saved me because they gave me a reason to get up each day,” she said. 'A garden doesn't wait for you, you have to work each day.”

She maintains the gardens by herself, bringing in helpers for weddings, who set up tents, tables and chairs for receptions on a green expanse mowed into the middle of 22 acres of native prairie. Keeping all these gardens in shape alongside running a wedding venue business is a lot of work, but she said she doesn't mind.

'It doesn't matter that I've been on the stages of the world - when you've got a farm background, you're a worker,” she said.

Sometimes she considers selling the land, retiring, for real this time, and perhaps traveling - she'd like to see Vienna. But she's not ready to give up her labor of love just yet.

She worries about what will happen to her gardens if she sells them. Her nightmare is they will be bulldozed and developed, and she is working with a lawyer on a covenant decreeing the land's use for a certain number of years.

Over the years, cultivating these gardens has also meant cultivating friendships, some that have lasted for years. Members of the public who come out for a tour and tea sometimes linger for hours, chatting. Couples she works with for weddings send her postcards from their honeymoons and keep her updated on their lives for years to come. She hosts fairy tea parties for children, during which she dresses up as a fairy godmother. Recently a small girl who had attended one of those tea parties spotted her in public and ran over to give her a hug, shouting, 'It's my fairy godmother!” One of her adult tea guests recently hosted a birthday party for her.

She won't say how many years she was celebrating. The years matter less than what she's done with them, she said.

'I told my son, ‘The moment I leave these gardens, I'll get old,'” she said.

And she's not ready for that just yet.

l Comments: (319) 398-8434; alison.gowans@thegazette.com

If you go

l What: The Gardens at the Gazebo on the Green

l Where: 3002 Newport Rd. NE, Iowa City

l When: Open by appointment for tours and tea

l Cost: $12.50 to $14

l Reservations: Call (319) 338-7889 or email gazeboonthegreen@yahoo.com for tour appointments or to learn more about private events.

l Details: facebook.com/GazeboOnTheGreen

l Annual ice cream social: 1 to 4 p.m. today (7/16); $10 adults, $5 children 6 to 11, free for children under 5.