LINDON — If Jennifer Thornton is around, don't leave a pair of sneakers on the patio too long. She'll pot a plant in them.
The same goes for wicker chairs, benches, swings, work boots, bird cages and charred pieces of wood.
"I love a challenge," Thornton said, surveying her impressive inventory of unusual pots, plants and flowers offered for sale from her front yard in Lindon.
"If it looks really cool, I'll put something in it. I'll figure it out."
Thornton is a master gardener with 30 years experience. She's worked at the Western Garden Center in Salt Lake and for several years at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi.
Each spring at her home 5,000 tulips bloom alongside the walk followed by 5,000 roses.
She loves plants and people and variety. And she's a bit of a rebel.
"I won't carry orange day lilies because everybody has them. I have the dark purple, the plums, the reds and the pinks," she said.
At Christmastime, she takes pre-orders for six colors of "the most incredible poinsettias."
"I grow a lot of the unique things that you can't buy around here. Too often, it's the same thing everywhere."
For instance, Thornton doesn't sell the yellow sunflower. She sells the pink ones.
She encourages putting a honeysuckle vine on almost anything, even a piece of dry sagebrush.
"Any twigs or branches, I like to get vines up them. Look there, my ivy's going up my tree and I'm letting it," she said.
Thornton mans her streetside business during the spring and fall but closes up in July and August because it gets too hot.
Along with her seedlings and flowers, Thornton gives advice to aspiring Utah gardeners. She monitors her neighbors' yards and makes sure her customers think about what they're buying.
"This is what you need for that," she'll tell one.
"Let me show you something that's native to Utah that will work," she tells another.
"Remember Utah is a desert. Buy perennials. Get involved with native plants that don't take a lot of water like portulaca and poppies and columbine," she said. "Think outside the marigold and the petunia and the day lily. Do something different."
E-MAIL: haddoc@desnews.com