Real gardeners cherish plants and share them with others, say Felder Rushing and Steve Bender, authors of “Passalong Plants.”

Many friends, neighbors and members of Bowmar Baptist Church have plants originally grown and passed along from Mary Randall’s garden on Gray Oaks.

Randall’s lot is small but packed with shrubs, bulbs, perennials, ground-cover plants and trees, plus bright annuals around the house, garden shed, fence, mailbox and property lines. Trees tower at the back of her lot with a steep bank and retaining wall to the west and a wooden fence along the eastern side of the backyard. The garden shed and a hedge of azaleas, camellias, hydrangeas, sweet olive and delightful bronze-wine-toned Japanese maples hide what was once a large dirt pile and provide an attractive view from the covered patio.

The result is an intimate, private garden.

Randall grows many of the traditional passalong plants, some that came from her mother, grandmother and siblings, others from friends. Hydrangeas, sweet shrub, mock orange, kerria, peonies, bearded iris, Mexican petunia, cannas, hostas, elephant ears, Southern shield fern, forsythia, althea, spiderwort (called blue grass down in Amite County where Randall grew up), quince, phlox, Clara Curtis chrysanthemums, perennial begonia and calla lilies grow happily with other foundation shrubs such as loropetalum, barberry, dwarf nandinas, variegated euonymus and mahonia.

Roses with vibrant color peek out here and there along with salvias, coreopsis, petunias, ruella and a few pansies that will soon be gone with the heat of the summer. The abundance of plantings hide bulb foliage that she has left to ripen for next spring’s bloom. Crepe myrtles promise more color later in the summer.

Caladiums will be tucked among the shady greenery in the next couple of weeks. Randall digs them up each fall before the first frost, places them in mesh bags and hangs them in her garden shed until the following spring. She pots the caladiums each spring so they can emerge from dormancy early. When the weather is suitable, she plants them in the ground and enjoys them for another season. This has worked well for the past 15 or so years, she explained.

A peach tree loaded with fruit grows near her covered patio. It grew from a pit that she threw out into the bed one day after eating the peach. She never expected anything to come from it, but she says the fruit is abundant and delicious until the raccoons discover the tree each year and proceed to gorge themselves on its ripe fruit. She never sprays it — just fertilizes it when she is fertilizing the rest of the flower bed nearby.

A gravel and stone walkway leads from the backyard to the front. Crabapples flush with maturing fruit and a dogwood, which she dug up, down on the old home place in Amite County, keep the area quite shady. Shade-tolerant plants such as bugleweed, liriope, azaleas, holly fern and a camellia from her mother’s garden grow along the walkway.

Accent beds enhance the front yard around the mailbox, along the driveway and at the western corner along the street. A Japanese maple that has produced seedlings that have been planted in other areas of her yard and have been given away to friends grows with a low yaupon hedge near the mailbox. Asparagus fern that has over wintered near the mailbox for several years, as well as Jackamundi clematis, Knockout rose, iris and various annuals provide a friendly welcome as one approaches her front drive.

Randall comes from a family of gardeners who loved to share plants with others, and she graciously carries on the tradition. Without generous dedicated gardeners such as Randall, we might have lost many of the passalong plants that commercial growers have chosen not to mass produce.

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Miriam Jabour, a Master Gardener and Master Flower Show judge, has been active in the Openwood Plantation Garden Club for over 35 years. Write to her at 1114 Windy Lake Drive, Vicksburg, MS 39183.