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By Lynn Underwood
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune All summer long, canoeists paddling down Minnesota's Minnehaha Creek in a certain wooded neighborhood experience a visual treat. Just around a bend in the creek, paddlers see Sue Price's colorful terraced garden. Drifts of native prairie grasses and beds of old-fashioned perennials hug the creek's shore, then climb the steep hill. Tiers of limestone walls outline the garden beds and draw the viewer's eye up the stone stairs. While working outside, Price often hears canoeists' excited comments about the panoramic garden behind her Edina, Minnesota, home. "Sometimes they almost run into the bank when they're admiring the garden," she said. It's taken eight growing seasons for Price to accomplish what she calls "controlled pandemonium" among her garden beds. As a fan of magnificent English gardens, which she's visited, Price continues to mold her own English cottage garden. She makes sure there is a continuous display of blooms from spring tulips to fall asters. In the style of an English garden, purple thyme, pink and violet cranesbills, yellow coreopsis and wild strawberries spill over the gravel pathways. Nearby lamb's ears "soften the path," she said. Price's back yard didn't always turn the heads of canoeists. In 1992, it had a single limestone retaining wall and a vast sloping lawn that Price and her husband were tired of mowing. When the large oak tree on the hill died, the idea for a terraced garden blossomed. "I knew I wanted a low-maintenance perennial garden with a lot of native plants," said Price. And the hill soaked up lots of sun. To draw up the garden beds and choose the plants for the garden, Price chose Cole Burrell, a horticulturist, landscape designer and author of A Gardener's Encyclopedia of Wildflowers." But first she had to figure out how to prevent soil erosion and make sure the plants would stay put on the steep hill. To do that, Price ordered two tons of rock and built the first wall herself -- which was an eye-opening chore. "That's when I realized the garden had to work with the curvature of the hill and the steepness," she said. So she hired landscape architect Diane Hilscher to design and install the stone walls that formed the terraces, the gravel paths and steps. Price used tons of Chilton stone from a Wisconsin quarry -- it most closely matched the original 1920s limestone, no longer available. The mortarless walls are stacked stones that result in a natural landscape. The garden was planted with Burrell's specialty -- hardy native plants that fit the area and climate, Price said. In his garden plan were waves of prairie grasses, such as big and little bluestem, that served as a transition from the cultivated garden to the wild woods on the edge of the property. Mixed in are native perennials and wildflowers, such as yellow coneflowers, New England aster, wild onion, daylilies, prairie phlox, butterfly weed and liatris that look natural growing along the creek. Tall goldenrod and aster deliver bursts of bright yellow, and towering Joe Pye weed borders her lot. In spring, the top of the her hill is a blanket of tulips, daffodils and other spring bulbs that Price can see from the house. The hilltop also is home for her shade gardens. Price recently added more beds of hosta, mounds of astilbe and scattered some jack-in-the-pulpit seeds under an oak tree. "It takes a long time to get things established in the shade," she said. Stone gargoyles and metal critter ornaments keep watch over Price's vast paradise. The garden also is a haven for birds and butterflies. Every few years at summer's end, liatris, coneflowers and other fragrant blossoms are monarch magnets during the monarch migration. Until the first hard frost, Price's home, too, is filled with blooms -- fresh from her annual and perennial cut-flower garden that includes monarda, malva, shasta daisies, zinnias and larkspur. Price, who said she's a "Type-A squared," rolls up her sleeves and digs into the challenge of caring for the large multileveled garden with endless steps. Each spring, she brings in six yards of mulch, but the wheelbarrow stays at the top. Plants, soil and mulch have to be hauled up and down the stairs. "It's my natural StairMaster," laughed Price of her daily workouts. She had a sprinkler system installed two years ago and now only has to spot-water. "I went through a lot of duct tape and a lot of hoses," she said. Price is resourceful at discouraging nibbling deer and other critters. She's had good luck by spreading granules of sewage sludge sold at garden centers and lightly misting the tips of tasty plants with Chinese hot cooking oil. When Price needs a break from her garden chores, a wooden bench at the top of the hill delivers a prime view of Minnehaha Creek. "If I get too hot and sticky, I'll walk in the creek and sit down," she said. Relaxation time is short before she's plotting what to move where or what to replace there. "I still have to dig out a big honeysuckle bush along the fence," she said. Price inherited her grandmother's passion for gardening when she was a child, and she's put in about 20 years of serious gardening. She keeps a garden journal, charts her plants and reads scores of garden magazines and catalogs, pondering garden questions all year long. For example, she said, "I wish someone could tell me how to grow lupine. It grows in the ditches up North -- you'd think it would grow anywhere." But Price's gardening successes far surpass her failures. Price has turned a back-yard hill that was hell to mow into a serene space where she can escape from her high-stress job as a 3M product regulatory specialist. "It's so relaxing and different from sitting in front of a computer, and there's not one adverse personality on that hill," Price said. To her, digging holes is therapy and helps her work off steam. Price said spring couldn't come soon enough because her shovel was ready. "If I could dig a hole right now, it would be big enough to plant an oak." (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)
RESOURCES :
A Gardener's Encyclopedia of Wildflowers: An Organic Guide to Choosing and Growing ...
Model: 087596723X
Author: C. Colston Burrell
(1997)
To order this title from Amazon.com, click here.
Rodale Press
Red Oak, IA 51591
Phone: 515-242-0282
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