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Bundles of geraniums and petunias bloom alongside Joe Catenazzo’s swimming pool. In the background, Italian cypress trees add height and texture to the garden.

By Diane S. Morales, Caller-Times

April 23, 2006

Eddie Seal/Caller-Times

White, purple, red and pink impatiens mingle with a variety of caladium under the oak tree. “A lawn is too much upkeep and you have to water it a lot,” Catenazzo said. “I’d rather see color, flowers.”

Drivers often stop to smell the impatiens blanketing Joe Catenazzo’s front yard garden. The oohs and ahhhs get a little more profound when people see his backyard botanicals.

The Corpus Christi Area Garden Council Annual Garden Tour & Flower Show will feature Catenazzo’s garden at 541 Poenisch Drive Saturday with four more residential gardens and a flower show at the Garden Senior Center. Included in the tour is admission to the Corpus Christi Botanical Gardens & Nature Center Saturday to May 7.

It’s the second time Catenazzo has participated in the tour, but gardening has been a childhood hobby that bloomed naturally.

“Mom didn’t like it. She hit her toe with a pitchfork when she was a kid at school,” he said. “They were doing some kind of gardening, and that was the end of it.”

Lucky for Catenazzo, and Saturday’s tour visitors, his mother’s experience hasn’t kept him from gardening.

Family abode

Catenazzo, an educational diagnostician, is remodeling a six-bedroom four-bathroom home where he lives with his father Joseph Sr., a brother, Jimmy, and his sister, Janice.

The family works together maintaining the 4,000 square foot home, sharing the cooking and cleaning chores. Catenazzo’s father helps water the front and backyard gardens, building brick and wood borders for the garden’s flowerbeds.

Decorating the house is also a family affair. The Catenazzos collaborated on selecting new windows, interior oak doors, oak floors, wall colors and tile floors for the formal living and dining rooms.

Antiques, reproductions and heirlooms furnish most of the home. The family acquired the pieces from living in New York, Puerto Rico, Florida, New Orleans and Italy.

Eddie Seal/Caller-Times

Baccarat French crystal stemware, Royal Doulton china and Christofle silverware adorn the mahogany table in the dining room. Joe Catenazzo said the table is a Henkle-Harris reproduction and the mahogany sideboard is by Kittinger.

“I wanted an 18th century English look here (in the formal living and dining rooms),” Catenazzo said.

Coral rose walls and green and antique white fabric hues decorate the adjoining rooms. White dental crown moulding, probably named for its tooth-shaped pattern, trims the ceiling. White wainscoting balances the lower wall accent with the crown moulding.

Eddie Seal/Caller-Times

An antique candlestick from a church in Italy was made into a lamp. Catenazzo and his family lived in Italy for three years. In that time, he acquired several Italian pieces, including the fringed lampshade and the brass hotel ringer near the lamp.

A Victorian couch reupholstered in a coral, green, yellow striped fabric by the Susan Castor Collection sits in front of a paned window that overlooks the front garden.

Images of nature also dominate both rooms’ décor with framed bird prints, Catenazzo’s collection of Boehm porcelain birds and delicate pieces of Lalique crystal with floral or leaf patterns.

Dine with nature

Sitting on the striped couch or the matching pink wingback chairs offers a direct view into the formal dining room. An oblong 10-foot mahogany table with a light wood inlay trims the table’s shape.

Susan Castor Collection also upholstered round-back chairs with striped fabric seats in seafoam green, Catenazzo said.

Eddie Seal/Caller-Times

Impatiens, caladium and a Hawaiian Ti plant border a cinderblock wall in the backyard. Catenazzo takes advantage of the fence to hang yard art and pots to fill with plants.

Matching jeweled light fixtures from Neiman Marcus hug the ceiling above the dining table, adding a touch of formality.

French doors lead to the backyard swimming pool and garden, or guests can relish the view from a dining room window.

Backyard beauty

After work, Catenazzo retreats to his backyard to unwind by tending to his garden. He spends about an hour a day during the weekday and eight hours on the weekends caring for his 50 varieties of roses, a rainbow of petunias and geraniums, pentas, lobelia, amaryllis and other plants.

“The nice thing about a garden is you always see something different,” Catenazzo said.

Eddie Seal/Caller-Times

Catenazzo bought the chest of drawers from the Susan Castor Collection, which also reupholstered the wingback chairs. Decorative moulding highlights a gold-framed floral painting.

Surrounding a curvy swimming pool, arches of pink, red and fuschia geraniums mix with purple, pink and white petunias. Allysum, a ground cover with small white flowers, and lobelia — another tiny flowered plant with violet flowers — are shaped in round bushes flowing from urns or along flowerbed edges.

Roses in every color imaginable perfume the garden, while a patch of purple and white larkspurs grow freely behind the Don Juan climbing roses.

“Everywhere I look I want to see flowers, color, plants,” he said.

Visitors will, too.