It’s a labor of love

Dan and Evelyn in their front garden. (Photo:bookwalterphotography.com)

Just call her the Plant Lady. Evelyn Leightman knows a thing or two about houseplants. While others were hawking Tupperware, her company sold greenery on the home-party circuit. “No burping airtight containers, just lovely plants with a hostess gift and everything,” she recalls of former days in Washington, D.C. suburbs.

She opened a 3,000-square-foot, interior-plant store near the nation’s capital next, supplying the original ficus trees for the Kennedy Center.

In 1989, after a stint in California, her green thumb hitched a ride to Houston where husband Dan’s career as an international tax attorney took off. With her son settled into college in the Golden State and a daughter in middle school, she satisfied her horticultural craving as head of Teas Nursery’s interior-plant department in Bellaire.

And that is how it started, this love affair with her house.

She had admired the contemporary River Oaks dwelling from afar while en route to clients. Fate intervened in the form of a Sunday newspaper advertisement.

“It was for sale. I had to see what this place was about,” she says. “But the front door opened, and I was in shock.”

Two ficus trees in the home’s marble-lined atrium were clinging to the last shreds of life with not a leaf on them. Beds were choked with weeds. To Evelyn, it was massacre by neglect. “I just about flipped out! It looked like a battle zone. I mean, how could anyone leave those trees like that?”

Add to this bleak scene water leaks, white carpet marred with black splotches, tacky lattice work and a brass staircase that had turned black from neglect (“I thought it was wrought iron,” she says) and she was ready to bolt.

But something about the place beckoned. It had good bones, potential. And after looking at the house again with Dan, they bought it.

Evelyn went about triage duty on the ficus trees and a few months later invited 75 of their closest friends to a pre-construction party at the fixer-upper. “Very casual, no air conditioning, no toilets that really worked,” explains Evelyn with a chuckle. “We had a contest asking guests to predict how long it would take to renovate the house. One friend said, ‘Oh, it’s going to be a year.’”

Bingo. That person won a meal prepared by Evelyn and a spectacular bottle of wine.

It took that full year “and then some to really bring it to life,” says Evelyn who tackled the project with gusto, playing off the curves of the staircase in her design. No square kitchen here. “It’s rounded, the better for people to mingle around.”

These days, the atrium is its standout feature, brimming with bromeliads, orchids, Chinese evergreens and ivies below two lush ficus trees. The home’s positive energy is palpable.

“I’m the only person crazy enough to have taken this on,” she quips. “But we love it. It’s a house of music, minerals, plants and art. All the things we love.”

They’ve added a wine room off the dining room as well as an exercise suite and all-purpose room upstairs. A dilapidated back porch was done away with during construction, replaced with a new breakfast room. And a comfy den now sits where a bedroom used to be.

“It’s a great party house,” says Evelyn. A throng of 300 packed the place at a 2004 pre-Super bowl party, the year Houston played host.

The couple opens up their home routinely for charity and fundraising events. Evelyn, a chronic lymphocytic leukemia survivor, works closely with the Texas Gulf Coast Leukemia and Lymphoma Society hosting and organizing galas and other fundraisers. “My goal in life is to raise money that is going to fund research into a cure for blood cancers,” says Evelyn, a former president of the group.

They’ve also opened their doors to the National Council of Jewish Women. Evelyn was president of the group’s Greater Houston Section for two years. For these contributions and more, she was honored with a 2009 ABC-13 Women of Distinction Award.

And not many couples can boast a bevy of ballerinas sitting around their bathtub. “We had a opening-night party here for the Houston Ballet,” explains Evelyn. “It was the perfect gathering point for the dancers. They had a ball!”

The couple are longtime patrons of the ballet. Dan has served on the foundation board for 23 years, and Evelyn is a past president of the Houston Ballet Guild. She also chaired the popular Nutcracker Market with – what else – flowers as the theme.

“No real surprise there. Reliant Center was brimming with flowers,” she says. “Flowers, plants, they just make everything better.”