Garten Praxis – November 2004

Sherrie Guiles had thought  about gardening at the house of her neighbor next door for eight years.  The east-facing  cottage was backed against a slope  on the north side of a hill in her Spokane neighborhood. Built in 1917, the house  belonged to a landscape architect who had constructed terraces from the local  black basalt rock which rose in horizontal tiers  behind the house. When she and her husband, Ron,  finally had an opportunity, they bought the property, mainly for the chance to own the garden.

“My favorite area of this garden are the  terraced beds in back,” Guiles says.  ”They  step up from the back of the house and are visible from our back windows.  The house sits wonderfully  down in  a pocket at the bottom of the slope and the garden seems to wrap around it from behind.”

Today on those same terraces, Astilbes, hostas, peonies, Blue Oat grass  (Helictotrichon  sempervirens),  yellow  weeping grass ( Hakonechloa  ‘Macra aurea’) Jupiter’s Beard  (Centranthus  ruber) and a host of other  perennials  create  layered  bands of color.    A small open area in the  middle terrace provides a quiet focal point featuring a simple bench surrounded by a circle of variegated boxwood (Virbunum carlessii) and  a small  ornamental dogwood ( Cornus alternatifolia ‘Varigata’.)

The first year she lived in the  house,  Guiles didn’t do any gardening at all.  “I was intimidated by the fact that the garden had been designed and built by a landscape architect,” she confesses.  “But after a while I realized that it didn’t represent me.  What we all want is a garden that represents us,” she concludes.  “And besides, things  get old and die and you have to make some changes.” When a tall hedge  of burning bush ( Euonymous elata) died, she felt free to take control of the garden and has never looked back.

Spokane has a  vigorous gardening  climate with the challenge of  wildly varying temperatures.  Winter lows can hit  minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and summers may reach the 90’s.  Rainfall is around fourteen inches, but  as yet the city has few restrictions on water usage, so gardeners are free to take advantage of  the growing popularity of gardening in the northwestern US and the large outpouring of new plants becoming available from many nurseries around the state.

Guiles’ garden has another feature that allows a wider range of  growing conditions than many – the garden is  overshadowed by a copse of tall Ponderosa pine trees   whose produces many  different types of shade.  The garden is protected from the  withering heat  of the western sun by the  crown of the high hill  to the rear, and gets  most of its light during the morning hours.  “’Full sun’” for  us means about six hours of  direct light between  10 AM and 4 PM,“  Guiles reports. “‘Shade’” can mean a lot of different things too – deep shade with no direct sun, filtered light, half shade and  hot shade.”

Guiles’ first major change to the old garden was the addition of  350 boxwood plants. outlining the paths and beds.   These are pruned twice a year and have  served as a unifying design element  to tie the  different sections of the garden together. She also ultimately reduced the lawn area to function as the strips of a soft green path way, which also provides a background  that marries the garden’s different sections.

Guiles’ passion for perennials is as robust as that of any gardener, and with many different microclimates to work with, she can successfully grow a very large variety of  plants in conditions ranging  from deep shade to full sun, but she plants in a most things in shady situations.

Guiles  has also worked at  improving the soil.  Her  successful approach suggests that shade loving plants  in general prefer a lighter soil that those growing in full sun.  Her all-around  shade plant soil recipe calls for two parts humus,  one part builder’s sand, and one part loam. Soil must be well drained and friable (crumbly).

Spokane hosted the International Hosta Society Convention  in 2002 and hostas are a mainstay on Guiles’ hillside. “I love Hostas and can grow just about any Hosta available,” Guiles claims.  “Hostas are the great equalizer in the borders, blending together or highlighting the other plants.   The gold and chartreuse  types can be particularly effective. I grow ‘Golden Tiara’,  ‘Gold Standard’,  and H. ventricosa ‘Aureo-marginata’, to name a few.”

Other  cultivars of Hosta in Guiles’ hillside collection range in size from the  nearly  hip-high Hosta sieboldiana  to  the more delicate varieties  like H.  ‘Sum and Substance’, or  H.’Honeybells’.  She also grows a wide variety of Geraniums  such as G. ‘Rozanne’, G. ‘Summer Skies’, G. ‘Johnon’s Blue’, G. ibericum G. orientalicabidicum, G. macrorrhizum . The garden also features varities of  Heuchera,  Heucherella, Astilbe, Veronica, Campanula,  Digitalis, Persicaria, Nepeta,  Cerastium and  more.

Guiles also likes to grow some  annuals and biennials.  “I prefer annuals or biennials that look like perennials,” Guiles confesses.   “I have  a lot of Verbascums like V. blattaria, V. chiaxii and  V. bombyciferm ‘ Arctic Summer’.  I also let Dame’s Rocket (Hesperus  matronalis )  spread throughout the garden, as I love the color in late spring,” she states.  “I  like Cosmos and  Cleome as well as traditional foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea.)”

Guiles has also succumbed to the lure of  maples,  as they grow with great abandon in the cool northern Washington climate.  She has about thirty varieties including  Red Japanese maple (Acer palmatum dissectum atropurpurea), A.palmatum “Boskoop”,  Full Moon Maple (A. japonicum ) and  vine maple (A. ginalla).  She also harvests many seedlings that  appear in the garden, planting the ones that are especially appealing to her and  passing the others  off to friends.

In 1997, a major ice storm destroyed many of the trees in the garden, causing a  creative crisis.  “We lost every ornamental tree we had,”  Guiles laments.  ”I could not even try to count them.  It was all I could bear to just clean them up. ” Nowdays, the garden features many  ornamental trees, replanted since the ice storm disaster – Persian Parrotia, Stewartia, Katsura Tree (Cercidiphyllum  japonicum ) and Malus ‘ Red Jade’ to name just a few.

The loss of a 75 foot Thuja hedge  resulted in piles of  fifteen foot long Cedar limbs. Guiles took the limbs and created her ‘rose basket’, an item that  invariably  provokes the  most interest and the greatest number of questions  whenever she talks to visitors about the garden. She wove the limbs into the form of a  giant  basket and then planted roses there to make a whimsical outsized ornament.

“The rose basket is filled with roses like Rosa ‘Baron Girod d’Lien’,  R. ‘Madame Pierre Oger’ and R. ‘Reine des Violettes’, and the handle is covered with the double Clematis Viticella Purupurea Plena Elegans,” Guiles explains.  “I  love our rose basket,  but I do admit the roses require more care because of the lack of air flow.  However, when the roses are in bloom, all is forgiven.   I wish I could  say we followed a pattern, but  we just made a big double oval of  metal stakes, and wove the branches  back she reports.

A sunny area which had filled with Juniper chinensis ‘ Old Gold’ provided a backdrop for a bench surrounded with a  thicket of sun-loving Shasta daisies, dayliles, Salvia nemerosa, Astilbe, Veronica, Balloon Flower (Platycodon) and other sun lovers.

Guiles  has turned problems into pleasures when  dealing with the typical nuisance  of reseeding plants.  Jupiter’s Beard ( Centranthus ruber),  Lady’s Mantle  (Alchemilla mollis) and blue Veronica are some of the culprits.

“I just edit them or pot them up and give them to friends,” Guiles cheerfully confesses.  “I hate to throw plants away.  A blue Veronica seeded itself  throughout  and blooms right when the Astilbes do, and it’s wonderful.  I don’t think I would have thought of this, but I’m happy to take the credit,” she laughs.

“I’ve learned many lessons in this garden” Guiles reflects.  “Your garden should look  good coming and going, so it pays to pretend you are a visitor and walk around and really ‘see’ your garden,” Guiles advises.  “It also takes guts to make  changes.” she  observes.  “I like to sketch and plan in winter, then  take one step at a time when starting a project”.

Guiles also has some opinions about color. “I think red is a really difficult color to include in many planting schemes,”  Guiles observes. “It catches your eye and holds it, diminishing the value for the adjacent flowers   Blue is a universal fixer for me.  It seems to  work with all colors. White is a great filler and also works well to transition from one color to another.”

“In my view, texture and contrast of shapes is much more important than flowers.  Trees, hedges, and  hardscape are like a black dress and the infill is  the jewelry. It’s best to do the structure first and the infill later, but it is not impossible to do it in  reverse order,” she concludes..

Any visitor to Guiles’ garden in peak season  will be compelled to  agree that this little black dress is accessorized and ready for a  big night on the town.

Charles Mann