East Boothbay resident John Hauptfleisch has what is known as a “green thumb.” As a young lad in the Catskill Mountains of New York, he took to the gardens like a flower to sun and water.

Hauptfleisch is best known for the garden along the sidewalk on Route 96 across from the East Boothbay General Store. The brilliant colors of poppies, petunias, day lilies, tiny tot iris – including a grape-scented variety brought over from Germany by his grandparents in 1890 – are hard to miss, and often someone driving by will call out, “Great garden!”

Not that he needs the encouragement, but it gives him satisfaction to know that he, his wife Olivia Cole Hauptfleisch, and their family are not its only fans.

But there are other gardens on the 2.5-acre property that also delight and amaze.

Hauptfleisch has 16 varieties of iris – his favorite flower. He has more than 50 roses in at least 30 varieties – his second favorite flower.

He has six varieties of phlox, four of columbine, 15 varieties of day lilies and a dazzling assortment of daisies, coreopsis, violas, portulaca, mock orange, morning glory, snow-in-summer, spirea, asters, peonies, geranium and spiderwort… to name a few.

In addition to flowers, there are fruit trees – pear, apple, peach – nut trees – pecan, black walnut and hazelnut – and a filbert bush.

Berries are also plentiful at the Hauptfleisch homestead: blueberries (including a bush yielding a pink berry), mulberries (that you eat by pulling the stem through your teeth, kind of like an artichoke), raspberries, bush cranberries, blackberries, elderberries, and a few strawberries.

“I usually help myself to some berries when I’m out mowing – to keep me going. I get into the berries like a bear,” Hauptfleisch said with his joyful, infectious laugh.

How does he keep up with it all?

Hauptfleisch chooses one section to concentrate on at a time, unless he is transplanting varieties, which will take him to multiple locations.

“I will not give up walking behind a mower until I have to,” he said. “I haven’t gone in for a riding model I can take a cold soda on, but I did graduate to a self-propelled one...” Still, mowing can take more than a day because he stops to spread the grass clippings around the bases of his flowers and plants. Or, as his wife calls them, “his children.”

He is diligent about mulching and feeding his horticultural offspring and has a hard time weeding and thinning them out when necessary. “I figure I put out over 100 large garden carts of grass clippings on the flower and vegetable beds and gardens between April and November,” Hauptfleisch said.

There are also compost piles in different areas all in different stages of decomposition for mulch.

He swears by mulching and 10-10-10 (equal parts nitrogen, potash (potassium), and phosphate) to fertilize and feed the extensive array of flora. And occasional doses of super phosphate to help them bloom better.

The gardens and beds are designed based on sun exposure, color, height and season; Hauptfleisch likes to have color somewhere on the property right to the bitter end of fall. But, as those best-laid plans go, many times the flowers do not grow as anticipated.

“John’s soil is so rich that the flowers and plants end up growing higher and wider than planned,” Olivia Cole Hauptfleisch said. “They explode on you!”

Some varieties, such as the day lilies, are deliberately planted in the shade to extend their bloom.

This year, roses bloomed abundantly because, Hauptfleisch suspects, of the mild and rainy winter. He says roses are tricky, especially the old English varieties, that are just a tad more delicate.

Every year after blooming, he cuts all the roses back. When he puts the roses and the other gardens to bed for the winter, he covers them with one or two five-gallon buckets of ground-up leaves, mounding it around the base or the tops of the beds. In spring he flattens out the leaves and uses them as mulch to start the new season.

In the vegetable gardens, lined with railroad ties, there is rhubarb, garlic, fennel, asparagus, potatoes, shallots, leeks, lettuce, summer squash, zucchini, peas, jalapeno peppers, tomatoes and onions.

In between garden beds there is Russian sage, cat mint, tarragon and garlic chives.

Roses dominate the landscape; an old friend in Rockport, with beautiful rose gardens of his own, gifted Hauptfleisch three pink old English roses. Others were grafted from existing rose bushes. Most of the roses are white, pink, red, apricot and a few yellow.

Yellow roses have never grown well for Hauptfleisch; you could say they are his Achilles heel.

He is not partial to the rugosa or beach rose as much as the other varieties, but has two token rugosas, called pavement and blanc. He believes the rugosas may have crossed with some of his knockouts.

“There are so many [rugosas], I don’t plant them. I go more for the English, knock-outs, Bonicas, Meidiland, carpets and other roses,” Hauptfleisch said.

Indeed, Hauptfleisch knows the name of almost every flower child in his gardens: roses include Abraham Darby, Acapulco Sunset, Iceberg, Oso Easy, Miss Salsa, Heart & Soul, Carnival and Wine & Roses Wigelia.

Occasionally, both he and his wife are stumped when a visitor asks what type of flower this or that is. The pair will look at one another as if trying to read the answer in the other's eyes, and say, “Well, we have this big book in the house with all of the names… and we're in the process of tagging everything.” Upon which they bust up laughing.

Hauptfleisch is a firm believer in buying smaller plants and dividing them. He also takes cuttings from existing flora to increase his brood. His method for lilacs and roses, for example, is to dip the end of the cutting in a rooting powder, place it in his ever-rich soil, and cover it with a glass jar to create a greenhouse effect.

“You just need patience, your small plant will catch up with the larger plant you would have spent more money on in a year and then you can divide them and have more for less,” Hauptfleisch said. “It’s a learning process.”

One method used when he decides to make a new bed, is to cover the designated area with ground leaves, let it sit for a year, and then till it up, keeping the remaining leaves in the mix.

No fancy watering system for this gardener: Hauptfleisch waters each of his beds, rose bushes, veggies and herbs by hand with a hose in the evening and tries not to hit the foliage. He says he doesn't have to water all that much thanks to all the mulch he uses.

All gardens must have accents for added visual interest, and Hauptfleish’s gardens include a statue, a wheelbarrow, a small boat, a lobster pot, a walkway and a patio constructed of bricks from the two chimneys the couple removed from the house. Rocks he dug out from under the shed, by hand, became a stone wall on the property in 1986.

Last year he began considering extending the Route 26 sidewalk garden to the next utility pole – and he’s still thinking about it. For years he has pondered building a greenhouse onto the back of the house or turning the entire back yard into a rose garden.

“He always says, 'Not another garden, I’m not putting in another garden,' but the next thing I know, he’s coming in saying, ‘I have another bed,’” Olivia Cole Hauptfleisch said. “His father was as crazy about gardening as he is.”

“I just don’t know when to quit,” said the proud “father” laughing. “I guess I’ll keep going ‘til I run out of yard… or I run out!”