Couple Create Cooling Oasis Ted And Betty Parrish’S Wooded Yard Wins Garden Club Award
Ted and Betty Parrish bought some hillside property near Lincoln Park more than 20 years ago.
They had their custom-designed home nestled into the rocky, wooded terrain and settled in for their golden years.
Most of the lot was preserved in its natural state with Ponderosa pines and Douglas fir. The understory is filled with wild shrubs, such as golden currant, roses and Oregon grape.
The Parrishes added a small cascading stream, built a couple of decks and finished the landscaping with rhododendrons, hostas and other shade lovers.
Now, their parklike woodland has been selected as the Garden of the Month for July by the Inland Empire Garden Club.
One of the judges called it a “cool and carefree garden.”
The club is continuing its contest in August for the third and final month this year. Entries may be made at Northwest Seed and Pet stores.
Ted Parrish said he entered his garden after reading a story in the South Side Voice about Steven Scheller and Dennis Dillin, the garden winners in June.
Winners of the gardening contest might be expected to be experts on plant names and their growth habits. The Parrishes are accidental gardeners of sorts.
They don’t have encyclopedic knowledge of their yard. Rather, they let nature do the work so they can enjoy it more.
The kitchen windows command a great view of their waterfalls, where birds and an occasional raccoon will stop for water.
The main outdoor deck sits at the base of the falls. The water sends up a light mist that falls along the stream, creating a moist cool zone on the deck that’s just right for relaxing on hot days.
“It’s a good place to close your eyes and listen to the water,” Betty Parrish said.
The Parrishes are high school sweethearts who moved to Spokane in 1955 and raised four boys in a house just down the street.
During those years, Ted Parrish said he always admired the vacant property on Girard Place where he now lives.
When the children grew older, the couple bought the lot and had architect Ron Tan design a two-story home to take advantage of the setting.
The brick-and-cedar house stands erect and blends well with the vertical lines of the hillside.
The spaces around the home are decorated with a collection of bright annuals like begonias, geraniums and fuschia baskets.
Parrish said he hired Precision Landscaping to install the cascading creek that drops about 15 feet along the west side of the house.
The woodland hasn’t been without some problems. During the ice storm in 1996, the Parrishes lost several trees, including one evergreen that narrowly missed the neighbor’s home to the east.
A pair of chokecherry trees was felled by the ice, so the Parrishes planted a clump of birch for replacements.
“It’s kind of a wilderness area, and it’s only 10 minutes from downtown,” said Ted Parrish.
CONTEST CONTINUING The Inland Empire Garden Club is continuing its Garden of the Month contest in August for the third and final month this year. Entries may be made at Northwest Seed and Pet stores.