By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Hallie Jessup may be heir to the throne.
She was honorable mention in 2003, third in 2004 and second in 2005, good for $50.
She's moving up the street as well as up in the rankings for Town and Country Garden Club's 19th city beautification contest.
Jessup traces her fondness for flowers to childhood in Downers Grove, Ill., when she salvaged carnations cast off by a florist.
She has lived at 439 Colby St. since 1979 and was also featured in Leader Publications' first Homescapes edition in 2004. The 2005 section publishes Thursday.
Jessup, a neighbor of Daily News gardening columnist Nancy Wiersma, said the Casey family of Sandy Acres Farm and Feed Service built her home in 1964 and planted the big tree that shades her urban "hideaway."
She has no backyard, so extensively developed the front and sideyards of her corner lot, including a hosta bed completed in 2001.
For Homescapes she was pictured by her red-white-and-blue patch of patriotism, plus a yellow "peace rose," a tribute to her three brothers, of whom only Clayton Wiker of Sister Lakes survives.
One was in the Navy, one was in the Merchant Marines during World War II and one served in the Army in Korea.
Her fenced-in patio she calls her "garden room," where she can sip coffee while listening to birds and watching squirrels at her feeders.
Seated on the bench in the new area created since last summer, the white hydrangeas she introduced to her perennial bed with her $25 2004 prize to join daisies, peonias and irises.
Jessup has cooked at Round Oak Restaurant for 18 years, but she's also found a second job at Dussel's greenhouse.