The stairwell of Mary Haith Savage's home is wide enough for gardening supplies to escalate along the wall to the top, where a dozen plants in pots wait for spring in a south-facing window.

Ms. Haith Savage does not wait for spring. In her zeal to make Homewood beautiful one corner at a time, she is out in the cold filling garbage bags with the rubbish lurking among her irises and grasses.

Even in winter, a place can be less ugly with vigilance; Ms. Haith Savage, who is somewhere shy of 80, is being recognized for her vigilance, her outreach and her range as a Jefferson Award for Public Service finalist. But in her adopted neighborhood, she has been recognized for years.

"Everyone knows me," she said. "I'm the 'flower lady.'

"I hate that expression because it makes it sound simple and easy. When people call them my 'little gardens,' I say, 'Have you walked around in them? They're not little.'

"We have hauled tons and tons of debris from all these sites -- refrigerators, stoves, chunks of concrete."

In the bricks-and-mortar man-world that defines economic development, flowers and gardens get waved into a lesser category, one for volunteers. But beautification is among the most effective efforts in some neighborhoods.

Rob Stephany, executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, said greening and purposeful gardening are "the first substantial steps in reclaiming inner-city America." The loss of 75 percent to 80 percent of its population has left Homewood in a no-man's land of asset loss that calls for what he said is, "on face value, impossible work. People like her have chosen not to accept impossible."

Ms. Haith Savage is one of seven finalists for Most Outstanding Volunteer of the Year for the 2009 Jefferson Awards for Public Service. The winner will be selected at a dinner Feb. 11, and his or her name will be considered for a national Jefferson Award to be announced this summer in Washington, D.C.

The program is administered locally by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with sponsorship by Highmark, the Pittsburgh Foundation and the Heinz Endowments.

William J. Green & Associates will donate $1,000 to the Homewood-Brushton YMCA on her behalf.

Ms. Haith Savage volunteers the equivalent of a full-time job in her Homewood gardens, which occupy as many as four city lots to pockets and aprons of empty corners -- 12 gardens in all.

One brisk day recently, she went out to pick up trash and check on her plants. Gardeners do this the way parents linger in doorways watching sleeping babies.

"He's out," she said softly, nudging a heaved tulip bulb with the toe of her sneaker. "I should have brought my trowel."

She rubbed dried blossoms to scatter seeds and unearthed the hollow stalks of last year's annuals.

Residents, neighborhood groups, state Sen. Joseph Preston and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy have all donated to her cause, to which she has also attracted children in the YMCA's Lighthouse after-school program and 4-H clubs. But the weightiest donations are the lots the city gives her access to.

"If I find out a lot I want is the city's, I just go Downtown and get a garden waiver," she said.

Homewood is a neighborhood in three parts -- west, north and south -- all wounded by decades of blight. Its homes attest to once solidly middle- and upper-middle class populations that had largely moved out by the late 1970s. The demolitions that followed have left huge gaps between homes.

Ms. Haith Savage's perennials, annuals and goodwill have filled some of them.

"Neighbors let us use their water," she said. "School students and seniors come out on some weekends, and young men help lift foundation concrete and big rocks. Some lady friends help me weed, but I like weeding alone, too. You can clear your head."

Kiva Fisher-Green, a community organizer for Operation Better Block, called Ms. Haith Savage, "a wonderful asset. Before I knew who she was, just driving around, I thought, 'Who is that lady?' You'd see her by herself on different corners, sometimes with youth. I asked her if she got paid, and she said, 'No. I just love it.' "

Diana Ames, a founder of the Pittsburgh Shade Tree Commission, nominated Ms. Haith Savage for the Community Champion recognition that led to her selection as a Jefferson Award winner. She said Ms. Haith Savage inspired her "before I even met her, just from seeing the beautiful gardens she created. After working with her -- especially seeing the way she engages young people -- I have even greater admiration and respect for her work."

Ms. Haith Savage started planting at the Carnegie library branch in Homewood, where she was the community relations specialist. "I wanted for it to not look frightening to people coming to the library," she said. She enlisted the help of children from the city's summer youth program and 4-H.

The more she did, the more compelling it became.

"Young people say, 'Miss, why we doing this?' " she said, "And I say, 'As long as I am able, you are going to be proud.' "

A native of Mobile, Ala., who moved to Pittsburgh at age 5, Ms. Haith Savage graduated from Schenley High School and the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. She studied fashion design, from which she has earned income through her life and "still could make a little money sewing."

She had two sons. One lives in California. The other died in 2006.

In recent years, she has taken master gardening classes and volunteered at the Phipps Conservatory. She describes herself as "the environment person" for numerous nonprofit groups.

She is a founding board member of both the city's Shade Tree Commission and Pittsburgh Friends of the Urban Forest and chairs the Homewood-Brushton Community Improvement Association.

"I'll work with any group," she said, "but I like working with children most.

"Some of the girls show a little attitude at first. When we start working, I am not just a supervisor. I pitch in. When they start complaining, I say, 'Everybody stand back,' and we step away from what we've done. That way, they can see it.

"Then they might say, 'Miss, what do you want me to do now?'

"I help them create a bed and then let them design it. I don't just want these kids cleaning lots. I want them to develop something."

Doug Oster writes a blog, "Growing With Doug," exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.