This evergreen shrub produces elegant, arching branches that bear faint yellow flowers followed by fleshy orange-red fall berries. A contingent of volunteers, known as Friends of the Fred Heutte Foundation, and Norfolk master gardeners tend to the growing needs at the garden center. Fred Heutte helped found and develop Norfolk Botanical Garden and was a key figure in beautifying the city of Norfolk until his death in 1979. He introduced this area to the summer beauty of the crape myrtle blooms. The Fred Heutte Center Horticultural Center honors his gardening legacy, and celebrates the centennial of his birth and achievements through July 29.
Hollyhocks stand tall.
Master gardener Betty Trout nods her head in agreement. She's the master behind the English knot herb garden, a formal garden bed of small compact shrubs or herbs, planted in an intricate, intertwining pattern and kept neat by frequent shearing. Thursday mornings find many of them in the gardens, weeding, dividing, deadheading, pruning and enjoying time among the poppies, hydrangeas, sundrops and spiderwort. They love for people to visit and ask questions. Everything in the knot garden has a culinary, medicinal or household use.