Local couple carved out of a concrete slab an award-winning garden

Jake Serfass loves to play golf but never uses a cart. He played baseball at University of West Virginia and later in the Milwaukee Brewers system. He also played football , basketball, and soccer and grew up in Bucks County.

Ellis Mair in the Schuylkill rows. Growing up in Kennett Square, she played a variety of team sports, and spent several years doing karate.

Serfass, 38, stands 6-foot-3. Mair, 33, is five-foot-9.

Because they are so physically fit, in the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's Gardening concrete driveways worth it and Greening Contest last summer, the Fishtown couple were able to tackle the challenges of creating an award-winning garden from a concrete slab.

The yard was a concrete slab surrounded by a cyclone fence, when Serfass and Mair purchased their Fishtown rowhouse in 2015. Access to the street was too narrow for a wheelbarrow through an alley. The couple's hauled soil, gravel, concrete , wood, and plants manually.

Their first project was a fence that Serfass laid out horizontally from pine boards, ""to make the yard look wider,"" he says. For Mair 's plants he then built wood frames for raised beds.

When a drainage problem last year allowed a dry well to be built, Mair persuaded Serfass to get rid of the concrete. He broke up and removed 41⁄2 tonnes of concrete with a jackhammer, sledgehammer, and the help of two friends, which were replaced by slate pavers from a friend in Bucks County.

Now the two raised beds in the garden are ringinged with Belgian blocks purchased by Mair from the Fishtown Neighbors Association, which was clearing up a lot for a community garden. She chairs the Beautification Committee for the association.

Serfass installed a wood frame for seating in the backyard — cushions came from Restoration Hardware — and a grill frame and a table in the corner. For countertops he and Mair poured concrete in moulds.

Mair uses tomatoes, scallions, beets, carrots and trellised peas as containers. Window boxes are planted with a variety of peppers at the front of the House. The flower bed at the corner is blooming with delphinium, coral bells and heart bleeding. Herbs include mosquito repelling citronella, thyme, chives, Greek oregano, cilantro, sage and purple basil. A japanese willow and a hosta add height.

A second bed of yellow and pink lupine, salvia, asters, and pineapple sage is cultivated. Add height to Foxgloves and an Arborvitae. There are also blue and pink hydrangeas, and a fuchsia peony from the Kennett Square garden of Mair 's grandmother. ""They have to be 40 or 50 years old,"" says Mair.

Pollinators such as butterfly weed and mountain mint attract bees in her pesticide-free yard, and Mair has a colibird feeder. In his pickup, Mair and Serfass haul free compost and mulch ""pretty good"" from the Fairmount Park Organic Recycling Centre.

Many perennials came from plant swaps in Kennett Square with friends or from Mair's parents ' house.

She always loved to cultivate. ""When I was 10 my dad made me a herb garden three by four feet,"" she says.

Serfass claims he's just the labourer, but at a local nursery he picked out an apple dogwood. A mural painted on the back of the stucco wall will be his future addition to the garden. Originally a door was there but to allow for a larger kitchen it was pushed to the side of the building.

Serfass and Mair dug the interior after buying the 1890 rowhouse and moved the staircase for better flow. What was a one-bath, four-bedroom house became a three-bedroom, with 21⁄2 bathrooms. The master suite and living room features exposed beam ceilings, exposed brick walls, a fireplace, and hardwood floors throughout.

Mair and Serfass share a home office filled with plants and painted grey with white trim. She operates Go4Mair, a business that brings athletic trainers into contact with schools and sports organisations. He is athletics director at Father Judge High School in northeast Philadelphia.

Shelves in the kitchen are lined with canned tomatoes , peppers, applesauce, and pickles from Mair which go well with the barbecue from Serfass.

The garden is lined with lights for entertaining nightlife. Serfass has both a smoker and a grill, and is looking forward to cooking for friends outdoors soon.