In rose-unfriendly subtropics, Kara Sher’s yard explodes with blooms

A white picket fence surrounds the cedar-shingle house sitting among dozens and dozens of rose bushes, maybe more than 150 of them. People go by every day and are mesmerized, says Kara Sher, an interior decorator and real estate agent who lives in Fort Lauderdale.

Her roses include about a half dozen purple varieties as well as almost a dozen pinks with names such as perfume delight, ivory tower, Christian Dior, Belindas dream and sweet surrender. There are elegant long-stemmed hybrid teas, clusters of grandifloras and floribundas as well as showy cottage roses.

When Sher was asked what she wanted for the garden of her home where she lives with her children and life partner Jim La Vallee, she started sketching. She drew her dream, which grew out of a visit to a friends farm on Nantucket Island several summers ago.

The farm was nothing short of being storybook, she says. She recalls the yard was filled with nikko blue hydrangeas, pink roses and hot pink peonies.

Today at Shers home, there are roses along the street. Inside the fence, the yard is neatly carved into four beds that are bordered with ilex and separated by white pebble paths.

On clear nights, the family including Michael, 9, and Caroline, 12, gather on two handmade white benches to watch the stars and enjoy the perfume of the flowers. Its like an oasis. You come out here and you feel like you are on vacation, she says.

Or she might have her morning coffee in a wicker chair on the front porch overlooking a hedge of small lilac-pink Caldwell roses that grow in eye-catching clusters. Youll also find these charmers lining the fence along the street.

In summer these bushes explode with blooms, says Sher who grew up in Fort Lauderdale. But it wasnt until she moved to California as a young adult that she planted her first rose garden. The climate was perfect and I fell in love with them, she says.

Returning to South Florida, she worried that she wouldnt be able to grow roses in the hot sun. After all, they arent tropical plants.

But she was driving around town with her mother and saw a yard full of roses. They stopped the car and Sher knocked on the front door but no one answered. The next day she returned to find the owner home. I begged him to tell me his secret, she says.

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In rose-unfriendly subtropics, Kara Sher’s yard explodes with blooms