A VISION BLOSSOMS
BOLD BLOOMS INTERMINGLE WITH BOULDERS AND BOXWOODS IN TIM VALERIO’ S NEWLY PLANTED COTTAGE GARDEN.
BY KATE RADER + PHOTOS BY CHRIS JACKSON
Tim Valerio welcomes me with a smile as I pull up to his Sharpsburg cottage. It wasn’ t hard to tell which was his home— familiar boxwoods and roses peeked out at me from behind a quaint porch overflowing with potted plants of every shape and size. I had greatly anticipated this visit to a garden planted just the year before by Tim at his new home next to St. Paul’ s Episcopal Church.
Once occupied by a church parishioner and later bought by the church, the home was familiar to Tim. As a member of St. Paul’ s, Tim has been enhancing the property’ s landscape for years, adding a magnolia tree in honor of a priest who retired, a memorial garden on the east side with a statue of St. Fiacre, patron saint of gardening, and most recently, a private garden with a bench surrounding the church’ s columbarium.“ I wanted it to feel peaceful,” he says.
“ Peaceful” spaces are something Tim has a special knack for creating. In 2006, Hagerstown magazine featured the more formal gardens Tim had designed at his former home in Chewsville. After years of nurturing and adding to his landscape, Tim faced a new challenge in Sharpsburg— a blank slate.“ It was just grass and boulders. I added trees to enclose the space
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