To say Mike Butera has a green thumb is a gross understatement.

The longtime Natick resident spent over three decades running his landscaping company, manicuring and beautifying untold acres of green spaces.

Now long since retired, Butera has spent years cultivating the property of his Greenleaf Road home into a growing work of art. As winter months surrender to milder temperatures, springtime begets blooming flowers and an edible harvest that stretches into December.

“The whole neighborhood comes by to take pictures,” said Butera.

The crowning jewel of his horticultural art is a massive hydrangea in the front yard, which he says currently hosts between 300 and 400 blossoms. The flowers, each a pastel bouquet of blue, are a challenge to exactly inventory due to their clustered quantity.

That said, Butera keeps a tally on the fruits of his labor that are easier to account for. His gardens produced 78 pounds of potatoes last year, for instance, a yield that he’s on track to match this season and possibly surpass.

As of the middle of last month, the master gardener said 48 cucumbers had thus far been harvested. Two rows of corn (corn!) were sprouting up from his soil, which of course would have to wait until autumn to be plucked. 

The volume and variety of Butera’s flowering and fruiting flora is eye-popping proof of what’s possible from hyper-local agriculture. It throws shade on our many mundane and manicured lawns of grass — they are for showing, Butera’s for growing.

The size of his front and back yard (in proportion) to what is produced is astounding to behold, a testament to his powers of planning and planting. Areas of his yard have been allotted and assigned to best take advantage of space and sunshine.

It’s as if an interior decorator designed the environment just outside his doors, balancing this element with that, to create a harmonious whole.

Could a family exist on what’s grown on the modest plot of land on which they live? Butera’s agricultural exploits seem to answer in the affirmative.

Butera planned his crops with a balance of cold-weather vegetables to stretch the harvest to all but the harshest winter months.

“Everything you can imagine for vegetables,” he said. Family, friends and neighbors have been picking lettuce since May. “We’ll be picking carrots from August all the way to December.”

Butera’s granddaughters Ray and Alara, aged 10 and 7, have participated in the planting and process. From seed to sauté, the entire cycle engenders an appreciation for the time and care required to produce what ends up on our plates.

“They get a kick out of it,” said their grandfather. “So it’s a lot of fun for the family.”

His wife is enamored of Zinnias, and so a small patch of the Butera plot is allotted to allow the brilliant flowers to bloom. The family’s garden hosts between 500 and 700 perennials.

The day we spoke, Butera had harvested some Swiss chard and broccoli, and the previous day brought several eggplants. A newcomer to the garden is a potted fig tree, an addition that requires special care. The trees won’t survive New England winters, and so must be brought indoors during the darkest season.

Butera’s brother-in-law hosts a more mature fig tree, which he winters by burying it below the frost line. Tucked in snug for a long hibernation beneath a thick blanket of straw, the tree waits out the winter, bides its time until brighter and warmer days return.      

His son now runs the family landscaping business by which Butera made his living for 53 years.

Now that he’s long since gotten his own garden down to a science, Butera coaches family, friends and neighbors in greening their own thumbs.

“We’re going to be doing a garden for him,” he said of new neighbor. “I help them out.”