I’m happy to finally have a Virtual Greenbelt Garden Tour outside of Old Greenbelt, thanks to Hope McCalla in East Greenbelt. (Here are the 6 Summer Tours.)
I visited Hope and her garden in early September. After we video’d, I mentioned that I’d be looking for music by Greenbelt musicians to accompany the video and told me her next-door neighbor is a musician. Turns out, it’s Barry Holober, drummer for the Fabulous Hubcaps! He and wife Becky are New Deal Cafe regulars, so I got to know them. Permission to use Hubcaps music for this video was a cinch.
Hope writes about her garden:
Most of the blooms from my front garden are already gone, so I have added a garden bike with mums, and pots with zinnia and marigold. On my steps are pots of mandevilla (a favorite of mine), coleus and perslane. The perslanes are trailing plants that will bloom way into the fall.
In my back yard are hardy hibiscus, which bloom have beautiful dinner plate petals. They bloomed first in early summer and are now reblooming. They’re hardy, so they will die back in the winter and grow again in the spring.
There is also a garden bike along my back fence. We call that space the red wall.
The deck is where my husband and I spend many long evenings together. There are hanging plants, such as petunia, spider plants, sedums, large pots of petunias, and a beautiful red and white mandevilla. Many wind chimes there grace us with beautiful music.
This year I transferred many of my vegetables – tomato, pepper, lettuce, thyme and parsley – to my deck.

NOTE: By contributing these pandemic stories, photos, et cetera, Greenbelters are making an unconditional donation of the material to the nonprofit Greenbelt Online.org and the Greenbelt Museum/City of Greenbelt, which reserve the right to keep, lend, or otherwise dispose of the donated material, and may use the material on our website, for social media or other postings, in promotional materials or in future exhibits.
Amethyst Dwyer
Love it!!
Melissa Mackey
Thank you, Hope, for sharing your garden. What a cheerful, appealing use of plants, their display, and the comfortable social seating area for enjoying the view from the porch.