JAY – It started with the white rocks in the front yard of their new home nearly 20 years ago. Clint and Pam Brooks didn’t like them, so they had to go.

Then Clint Brooks found a cure for the dreaded bank mowing he hated to do: Plant lots of flower beds and surround them by crushed stone.

Colorful petunias, dahlias, marigolds and other annual flowers now grace the bank.

The backyard used to be wooded nearly up to the house. Now it’s a paradise of thousands of blooms, orchards, vegetable and fruit gardens, and family recreation.

From perennial flower beds to berries to tomatoes, it all fits on about three-quarters of the couple’s 1-acre lot.

He’s a paper mill worker. She’s a schoolteacher. Both lead busy lives between their jobs, family and other activities.

Yet they still find time to beautify their yard.

Their Belmont Drive property was chosen as the June “Yard of the Month” for its “excellence in yard care and presentation.” The contest, which will also have winners for July, August and September, is sponsored by Rocky Hill Landscaping & Nursery, Inc. in Wilton and the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce.

“I enjoy being outside and this gives me the opportunity to do it,” Clint Brooks said. “Each year, we try to do something else.”

The couple, married nearly 33 years, have a common interest in gardening.

They start in the spring and don’t stop until fall when the beds are cut down and put away for winter.

“Once we get going, everything comes together,” he said. “You just set your mind to do it and everything gets done.”

There was no mapping involved, Brooks said of their yard formation.

“I just did whatever came to mind, nothing very formal,” he said.

Their favorite garden is the one inside the fence of the in-ground pool area where a garden pond, a water fountain, black-eyed Susans, cattails, and bee balm are among the features.

Along a wooden fence in the backyard, a line of day lilies grow. On the opposite side of the fence a half-dozen chickens are being raised. A pig pen is empty this year, as is a bee hive.

One of the things they really like is a line of Khelm’s Bechtel flowering crabapple trees located on one side of the yard that has delicate blossoms that resemble miniature roses.

Brooks estimated they put 30 hours in between them each week in yard work.

“We usually take a bed and work on it,” Pam Brooks said. “It usually doesn’t take that long to do some pruning … It’s been fun.”

They also spend time traveling around the state, searching for flowers from Bar Harbor to Waterford.

“You are always looking for things. We look at beds, flowers and designs,” Pam Brooks said.

As the Brooks walked their yard, she turned to her husband.

“Are we finished? I am, you’re not,” she said as she laughed, about their growing list of projects.

Next, they plan to grow grapes.

“We want to do an arbor,” she said.