In the quiet of the countryside.... a garden sings

People encounter a remarkable experience when they visit Tom and Susan Felmer’s gardens, and it’s just not because of the floral feast for their eyes.

Their property, on Hilly Lane in the Town of Cedarburg with a Saukville address, has an expanse of flower gardens that offer a brilliant palette of colors. But the gardens also produce a symphony of birdsong. The vocalizations of eagles, egrets, ospreys, herons and a plethora of songbirds fill the air, along with the sounds of pollinators at work.

“You can sit on the deck and hear the bees,” Tom said.

At night, frogs emerge to occupy the property’s pair of ponds.

“It’s like a chorus,” Susan said.

Pitch-black conditions — there are no streetlights — allow stars and fireflies to be feature acts in the visual show.

Their road gets more bicycle traffic than it does vehicles. Visitors feel like they’re miles from urban civilization. But they’re smack dab in between Cedarburg and Saukville.

“They can’t believe it’s 10 minutes from town,” Tom said.

“You feel like you’re in the country. We love that,” Susan said.

Plenty of garden enthusiasts got to see their organic gardens on the Cedarburg Women’s Club Garden Walk last year, and now the Felmers are reaching a larger audience. Their property is one of three on a garden tour called Open Days to be held Aug. 10 and 11.

The Garden Conservancy, a nonprofit organization founded by renowned gardener Francis Cabot in New York state in 1989, holds Open Days events across the country showcasing gardens. The Wisconsin show is being held through a partnership with the Garden Club of Greater Milwaukee.

Sue has butterfly gardens that take the shape of butterfly wings when seen from the deck of their son’s house on the property.

Sue said she loves to be outside with “her hands and feet in the dirt.”

Sometimes, she will sit among the lavender plants with a camera and photograph the bees and butterflies landing next to her “just doing their thing” as bluebirds swoop into the birdbath.

Six beehives are on the property, producing as much as 300 pounds of eclectic-flavored honey per year, and a swarm every year comes to occupy the inside of a large cedar tree. Once the queen goes inside, thousands of bees in a vortex join her within minutes.

“That’s kind of the beauty of this whole property,” Tom said.

Four fawns have been born on the land, and the deer appreciate a couple of apple trees. Raccoons devour peaches from a peach tree, and birds and raccoons eat cherries before the Felmers can get them. The early birds also got to the strawberries this summer, gobbling them up the night before the family planned to pick them.

The Felmers recently added raised vegetable gardens they hope will produce food next year.

This outdoor extravagance wasn’t the plan for the high school sweethearts from Green Bay who will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary this fall.

The family of six moved to the area from Milwaukee in the 1980s, and Tom’s job at the Brady Corp. sent everyone to live in Antwerp, Belgium, for four years while he ran the company’s European operations.

“Our youngest was a baby. We had to hold him up for his passport picture,” Susan said.

The Felmers had purchased the eight-acre property where they live now with plans to build a house on it before they moved to Europe. After returning to the U.S. in 2003, they lived in a different house before moving into their newly built home in 2006.

When the property next door was put up for sale in 2009, the Felmers bought it. They rented it out until their son, his wife and two daughters moved in several years ago.

Little did the Felmers know that the home had a history with local ties. Lynn Campbell Hertel of Grafton, who was doing genealogy work on her Irish roots, called the Felmers for information about the house. Her ancestors, the Hemlock family, immigrated to the U.S. and lived at the site in 1846.

The inside of the summer kitchen on the property has the initials “AEB” inscribed. Annie Elizabeth Bradley was one of the former owners of the property. The year 1886 is also inscribed. The Felmers think that’s when the shed was built.

“It’s not our family but I feel like it’s our family,” Tom said of the Hemlocks.

Susan has a degree in landscape design, and it turned out that Hertel is a gardener as well. She soon became part of a gardening team.

“That was so serendipitous,” Susan said. “It takes three of us. We just play off each other. Gardens are a labor of love, a work in progress.”

This spring, goats named Ivy and Marigold were added to help eat invasive plants such as buckthorn and garlic mustard. The Felmers’ granddaughters next door, ages 9 and 6, put the goats on leashes and take them for walks.

The girls received 10 chicks for Easter, of which one turned out to be a rooster. They named them all after Disney princesses — the rooster is Hei Hei, who Tom said crows from 4:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. — and  Tom recently finished an elaborate coop for them called Cluckingham Palace. The girls take care of the chickens, and like to scoop them up and hold them.

The Felmers boil maple syrup from trees on the property, and Susan picks and freezes black raspberries.

The ponds attract herons that thin the bass and other fish populations, as well as wood ducks, hooded mergansers and a pair of cranes.

A 90-by-40-foot barn that’s 138 years old and 100% pegged with heavy boards  has some of the original floor and has hosted private bourbon tasting events, weddings and a huge chemo bash for a Cedarburg girl who beat cancer.

A red 1948 International truck that the Felmers’ son found and said his father had to have graces the inside. Susan said driving the stick-shift truck home from Fredonia was interesting. The back of the truck has served as a bar and has been filled with flowers.

The barn has a swing the Felmers’ son built, along with furniture and some antiques.

While the Felmers are retired, their son’s family watches them work on their gardens, sometimes from morning until dark.

“There are times when we scratch our heads,” Susan said of retirement.

Susan got her love of gardening from her mother and grandmother, and Tom spent much of his youth on his grandfather’s farm.

“Here we are. It just keeps growing,” Susan said.

“This ended up being our getaway place,” Tom said.