What do our gardens say about us?

JULY 1, 2012

Lee and I spent a recent Saturday morning on a walking tour of four gardens in Palouse, Washington. The friendly hosts also invited us into their homes, but the gardens were the magnets for me. Each garden was lovely, and each seemed to say something personal and individual about its owners.

At the first garden we visited, a family theme came to mind when the owners’ young son greeted us and checked our tour tickets. He exuberantly pointed out the hanging containers of flowers he had chosen and planted. Before resuming his hosting duties, he directed us to the family’s pumpkin patch. His sister’s bike, vivid with potted flowers in its wire basket, stood propped against the house. Pink daisies lined the path to the backyard, where a tea party waited for the family’s daughters on a little table in the shade. The backyard of the three-quarter-acre property looked out onto peaceful hills. It was easy to imagine this family picnicking out there, among the containers of lavender and violas. The children's mom said the family counts on their dog to keep watch on the back porch and bark at the deer, who are all too interested in the tomato garden.

Art and tradition seemed reflected in the second garden we visited. In the front yard, a round rose garden with circular stone borders was dedicated to the owner’s parents. Across the front walkway, a similar stone garden featured a fountain and steel sculpture of herons, titled “Palouse River Blue.” The sculptor is the homeowner’s brother. The backyard’s old-fashioned perennial garden reminded me of my grandma’s garden. Sweet William, delphiniums, monarda, and pansies bloomed alongside herbs and containers of annual flowers. Flowering shrubs and columbine bloomed along the rockery in another raised bed. Along the side yard, a lush mass of deep burgundy and pale pink peonies spilled color and fragrance, and a second rose garden was a lovely surprise.

A respect for the past and a love of nature seemed clear in the next garden, which encircled a lovingly restored 1890 home in the Palouse countryside. The owners had rebuilt the house using recycled materials, including wood from the historic Palouse Hotel. Lady bells and lilacs bordered the front yard, and, to the east, the owner had spent 15 years restoring a prairie area. Native grasses, allium, yarrow, camas, purple prairie flowers, blue lupines, and horse parsnips grew there in their natural setting. Closer to the house, raised vegetable beds held tomato plants, berries, corn and greens – all, unfortunately,big draws for the deer, rabbits, quail and voles that share the prairie. A charming formal garden behind a low fence paid tribute to the past. Lilacs, lupines, iris, white peonies, cat mint, foxglove, hollyhocks, columbine and perennial geraniums bloomed in peaceful shades of white and purple.

At the fourth house, the true garden was the majestic view from the deck onto the Palouse River, the prairie and the velvet hills. The owners also brought nature inside, with a sun room and houseplants. Along the deck, flowers grew in containers – and I noticed a delightfully impetuous choice: tall delphiniums growing in the same pots with tomato plants.

I love garden tours, and always go home with ideas for our own yard. Imagining the time people must spend on readying both their gardens and their homes, though, gave me a case of sympathetic anxiety. If we were part of a Moscow home and garden tour (as if!), I would frantically be vacuuming the living room every five minutes for traces of dog hair and cat fur. And, unlike the well-behaved dogs who greeted visitors on the Palouse tour, our own two bouncing, licking, galumphing mutts would have to be exiled to another neighborhood for the day.

As we drove home from Palouse, I thought about the different garden styles I had seen. What would my own garden reveal about me? Maybe a romantic soul lives in my garden, one who loves old-fashioned flowers and dramatic jewel tones, set off against tall white phlox. Maybe, if you found her digging up more grass to expand her flower beds, you might also decide she was impetuous.

What does your own garden say about you?