Gardening: Old finds peek through blooming August garden of the month

Walking into Lory Miller’s whimsical and colorful garden early one morning last week was enough to make me forget the plateful of projects, work assignments and to-do lists I thought I had to deal with. For an hour, I wandered through one garden room after another just taking in the blooming plants, art work and clever signs with sayings like: “Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.”

I walked out of her garden an hour later without a care in the world. Miller’s horticultural therapy efforts also charmed the judges from the Inland Empire Gardeners, who awarded her the August Garden of the Month award.

Miller’s garden draws you in right from the curb. Billows of pink and white petunias spill over a low rock wall and draws you through a Victorian style white metal arch – a $40 find from a friend. Another riotous border of colorful annuals and perennials lead you onto an old-fashioned sitting porch that wraps around the front of the house; the perfect place to hear the unique story of how the Millers connected with the house.

A Spokane native, Miller knew she wanted to live in a 1905 vintage house overlooking the Monroe Street hill as far back as 1973 when she discovered it while looking for the perfect neighborhood to live in. She even told the owner that she would live there someday. It would be another 16 years before they happened onto it again with a “for sale” sign in the yard. There wasn’t much of a yard so Miller had a clean slate on which to turn her gardening passion loose.

After we finished the storytelling, we wandered into her side yard surrounded by borders of late summer perennials and a vegetable garden built in a series of corrugated metal raised beds. The tomatoes were pushing 6-feet tall and were heavy with ripe fruit thanks to our long, hot summer. A gate into the backyard led us into Nana’s Garden where Miller has planted over a dozen rose bushes she salvaged from Mother’s Day leftovers at a drug store. “They start out pink and then fade to white,” Miller said.

The barbecue patio has a wonderful old barn wood, high back bench that Miller uses to display some of her colorful cup and saucer sculptures.

“I like to scavenge all kinds of old things to use in the garden,” she said with a laugh.

Her farmhouse and fairy gardens are full of other castoffs. Mixed in with the funky junk finds are a kaleidoscope of perennials, shrubs and vines including a dusky red oakleaf hydrangea and an enormous trumpet vine that was covered with bees feasting on the flower nectar. In the back corner of the yard is a pergola all but buried in wisteria and Virginia creeper vines. Miller has wound strings of lights from the canopy making the perfect place to spend a relaxing evening after a hot summer day.

Without a doubt, this is therapy at its best.