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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Gardening: Step by step, she’s meshed garden and home

When Helen Hansen first looked at her current house on Spokane’s South Hill, it was dark with few windows but did have a nice garden.

She bid on it, but she didn’t get it. Disappointed, she went back to looking. Another year went by and she still hadn’t found anything. Then the house popped up again and she grabbed it. That was 11 years ago.

The modern architecture of the house was something new to her.

“I’d always had old houses,” she said. “So this was completely new for me.”

The house sits on two and a half lots on a narrow lane. The previous owners had done extensive landscaping including a huge contoured bed surrounded by a circular driveway. Evergreens dotted the garden, giving it year-round structure while a varied assortment of shrubs, trees, perennials and grasses rounded out the collection.

In the narrow but long backyard, numerous deciduous trees had been planted for shade and then underplanted with a wonderful collection of shade tolerant plants.

The garden was a few years old and had gotten a little wild over time. Hansen loved this wild nature and chose to do only a minimal amount of pruning, deadheading and general maintenance. “I like leaving it natural and letting plants go to seed.”

She began adding her own touches though. The original landscape lacked color so she began adding flowering perennials, vines, shrubs and few trees to brighten the garden up.

However, she found she couldn’t enjoy her garden from the house because of a serious lack of windows that not only deprived her of the views of her handiwork but left the house interior dark and dreary. So she started adding a series of sunrooms across the back of the house for her kitchen, dining room, and a place for a collection of large house plants.

With the entire back of the house now open to the garden, she could see out and enjoy the hostas, dogwood and hydrangeas from her living room. In the front of the house she added an atrium around her front door that provides an easy entry out of the elements and additional space for her indoor plant collection. However, the house was still dark so she added two large skylights: one over the front entry and one over her living room. With all this light the garden comes right into the house.

Hansen likes bold, colorful plants and over the years has collected some beauties. When we walked around in her garden last week, the daylilies were in full bloom. Her favorite is one called Frankly Scarlet – a play on a line from “Gone with the Wind” – that formed a 6-foot-wide clump of deep red flowers with a touch of yellow.

In another area was an enormous rhubarb plant whose big leaves added a bold texture to the garden. Earlier in the summer the area around the rhubarb plant was filled with 10-foot-tall pale pink and yellow foxtail lilies that towered over Hansen.

Pat Munts is co-author, with Susan Mulvihill, of “Northwest Gardener’s Handbook.” She can be reached at pat@inlandnw gardening.com.