The Yard Of The Month Chosen By The Clermont Garden Club 

By Grace Rabano, The Clermont Garden Club

 

The Clermont Garden Club’s Yard of the Month for September 2025, is the backyard of Austin and Cat Cochran at 15909 Bay Lakes Trail in the Greater Hills neighborhood of Clermont.

Prior to the pandemic in 2020, their quarter acre backyard was “all grass”. With lots of time on their hands during the pandemic, Austin and Cat began transforming their backyard into a xeriscaped food forest. Austin and Cat are vegetarian, and try to grow much of their own food organically. The backyard is strewed with a variety of edible greens, such as longevity spinach (Gynura procubens), katuk (phyllanthus androgynus), sissoo spinach (alternanthera sissoo), Okinawa spinach (gynura) and cranberry hibiscus (whose leaves are edible). In the winter months, lettuce and kale are grown in 2 raised beds. 

Austin and Cat grow many fruiting trees/plants such as starfruit (carambola), papaya, bananas, avocado, mulberries, citrus, blueberries and purple passionfruit. They experiment and learn as they go along. Austin and Cat found that they needed to attract more pollinators for their food plants, so they planted firebushes (hamelia patens), lantana, Mexican sunflower, marigold and various milkweed (asclepias spp.). 

 

Utilizing 4 deliveries of free mulch from chipdrop.com, Austin and Cat have been able to transform the grass yard into a xeriscaped garden without a single blade of grass! To the garden, they have continually added features such as trellises, stone paths, feeders, bird bath, miniature fairy homes and a small stone bubbling pond. Austin is proud to have a garden “full of life” with bees, butterflies, various reptiles and mammals scurrying about.

If you would like to nominate your or your neighbor’s garden to be the Yard of The Month, send an email to clermontgardenclubinc@gmail.com.