MARPLE — Those who are strolling or cruising through Broomall, can veer off of Paxon Hollow Road onto Hedgerow Drive and onto Richard Drive, and they’ll come across a floral oasis. The piece of paradise lining the curbside of Richard Drive, was created and is maintained by 88-year-old resident Anne Pearlman. “When you turn the corner on my street,” the octogenarian shared proudly, “It’s just beautiful.
It’s like coming into another world!” Pearlman started beautifying her neighborhood after moving to Richard Drive with her husband Philip in 1966. She said her hobby began spreading from her own house to her neighbors, after noticing her next-door neighbor received much more sunlight than the Pearlman house did. “I took some plants from my own garden and planted them curbside at my neighbor’s house and they blossomed, so that was the start of it all.
” After raising their three children — Eileen Pearlman, Beth Chance and Renee Pearlman — the gardener’s devotion to her pastime grew. She retired from her secretarial job at a local law firm at age 78, and began devoting more and more time to planting and sprucing up Richard Drive, slowly transforming it into a wonder garden. Of course, she asks her neighbors first if it would be OK to put her green thumb to work there.
She has never gotten a negative response. Pearlman, a grandmother of six, said that she formerly was a knitter, but now prefers only gardening as her main hobby. “As I get older, I can�.