Masters At Work Spokane Master Gardeners’ Inaugural Tour Is Sunday

Rapidly changing and harsh weather conditions make garden tours a challenge for both visitors and gardeners, but that doesn’t seem daunting to area gardening groups.

The inaugural Spokane Master Gardeners tour Sunday continues a busy season of benefit yard and garden tours in the area.

Following are highlights on the self-guided tour:

* Gardening as an avocation isn’t new to Kay Loibl, but her garden is. When a sewer project came through her neighborhood last summer, the construction literally took out Loibl’s front yard.

“We had a hole out there 20 feet deep,” she says.

Now, though, the hole has become a fountain and raised flower beds, thanks to a lot of hard work by Loibl and husband Dan, and in preparation for this Sunday’s garden tour, a passel of gardening friends.

“Dan and I want to look out the front windows into the garden instead of at the neighboring houses so we raised the beds,” Kay says. Eventually, when the new shrubs and perennials such as foxglove, soapwort and daisies are full-grown, the front yard will resemble an old-fashioned country garden.

The Loibl yard is an oasis of calm adjacent to the constant traffic noise of Interstate 90, just south of their property. Beds are planted with perennials and Kay filled any otherwise bare spots with annuals she raised from seed in her basement early this spring.

Most of the plants, though, were self-seeded by the plants she put in last August and September to rebuild the front-yard landscaping.

She takes after her mother, an avid gardener, in raising roses with stunning pink and red blooms. Loibl says the secret to the great gardens in the Spokane Valley is the rocks.

“The rocks in the soil hold the heat, giving us a longer growing season; it’s the reason we can grow beautiful tomatoes and Hearts of Gold cantaloupe,” she says.

For the garden tour, the Loibl yard will feature topiary bunnies. Three-year-old Harvey, a 6-foot ivy-covered bunny, will preside over the family of rabbits in the front yard. Since the pergola-type arbor, which practically fills the front yard, is new this year, Kay has yet to coax climbing roses and honeysuckle up the sides and over the top.

A waterfall and pond with 6-year-old goldfish, miniature cattails and blooming waterlilies is the focal point of the Loibl back yard. But visitors will want to check out the experiments in the vegetable garden - a potato barrel and above-ground planting of potatoes.

Refreshments will be available in the back yard and live music will be a counterpoint to the freeway noise.

To get to the Loibls’, 1708 N. Vista, take the Argonne exit from Interstate 90, drive north on Argonne to Knox (the first stoplight after crossing the freeway), turn west on Knox and drive to Vista, turn south.

Dottie and Jim Bender have converted an acre of cow pasture into a backyard park over the decade they’ve lived in their Spokane Valley home.

They moved from a mobile home in Southern California to Spokane when they retired and steadily, gardening has captured Dottie’s attention, practically crowding out her other love, golf.

“When we moved here, we wanted to get to some space,” Dottie says.

Her passion is ornamental grasses; about 60 varieties are planted in beds that surround the grassy back yard. But her interest is not limited to grasses. More than 500 different plant species - perennials, shrubs and trees - fill not only the perimeter beds, but also island gardens scattered across the acreage. Other than yellow petunias that flank the driveway and fill in a few flower beds out back, Dottie depends little on the easy color that annuals provide.

One corner of the Bender back yard is a shade garden with hostas and other plants that thrive in the dappled light under trees. Otherwise, plant species are mixed throughout the gardens - “I don’t follow any of the rules, including mixing pink and yellow flowers in the same bed,” Dottie says.

For years, she kept a diary of where she planted new species, and had an accurate list of every plant in the yard by botanical name until her computer crashed last fall and she lost everything on the hard drive.

Now, Dottie depends on a list she says is out of date, but still, she reels off the names of flowers and shrubs as she strolls from bed to bed.

Visitors to the Bender house should pause long enough to smell the fragrant pink roses at the corner of the driveway.

To get to the Benders’ yard, 11321 E. 14th, drive south from Sprague Avenue on Dishman-Mica Road, turn east on 16th. Continue to Woodward and turn north; Woodward ends at 14th and the Bender house is a blue rancher with split-rail fencing just east of Woodward.

The art and structures in the gardens of Maralee and John Karwoski are as interesting as the plantings.

Maralee tucked iron birds among the shade-loving plants in the side yard and the corner of the back yard; terra cotta birdhouses line the deck railing. Between gardening seasons, John builds things - towering arbors which now sport white climbing roses and a potting shed with a skylight.

“I grew up in Michigan and my dad was an avid vegetable gardener,” Maralee says. “He grew up on a farm and my grandmother was also a gardener.

“When my parents came out to visit, my dad brought a whole suitcase full of heritage plants from my grandma’s farm to plant here,” Maralee says.

Hostas consume the beds on the north side of the Karwoski house; quaking aspens shade the south side. The perimeter beds in the back yard, though, offer a study in collecting perennials. Several varieties of unusual peonies bloomed in lush pinks and reds in late June. Along with the common varieties of plants such as Autumn Joy sedum or foxglove, for example, are unusual varieties that Maralee found in catalogs.

There’s no real theme to the gardens - “If I see something I really like, I buy it and just carry it around the yard until I find a spot for it,” Maralee says.

The corner vegetable garden is a fine example of utilizing a small raised bed to its fullest. It’s packed with several varieties of lettuce, beans, tomatoes and other salad greens.

Maralee relies on containers of blooming plants to fill in bare spots in the gardens.

In addition to the garden art that’s permanent in the Karwoski yard, a display of birdhouses by Diane King will hang among the quaking aspens.

To get to the Karwoski yard, 3605 S. Cook, drive east from Bernard on 37th Avenue to Cook and turn north.

Mary Ellen Watkins’ gardening enthusiasm began with roses and grew from there. Constantly expanding gardens have overwhelmed the grass in her large back yard and now a big mound of a garden is growing in the front yard.

Roses still bloom in abundance throughout the property, but a vast collection of other plant species have overtaken the thorny bushes. Daylilies, salvia, peonies, sedum, clematis, evening primrose … the list of plants is long and varied. A stroll through Watkins’ yard is like a visit to a botanical garden.

A shaded back yard presents a challenge to Watkins’ gardening efforts so she relies on hostas, which have grown in just a few years to enormous mounds of green leaves. The vegetable garden flanks the back fence; in it she grows beans, kohlrabi, potatoes and carrots. Raspberries are already set to ripen; purple clematis flowers climb up the trunk of an apple tree.

She planted varieties of hens and chickens and other plants that spread in what she calls a rock garden experiment in the center of the back yard.

Watkins says she buys plants on impulse. “If I like it, I find a spot for it so people will find tall plants next to short plants. I don’t have a plan for the garden.

“I tell people to remember when gardening that if they don’t like a plant, they don’t have to keep it. Dig it up and give it away.”

To get to the Watkins’ yard, 312 W. 31st, drive west from Bernard on 31st Avenue.

1. GARDEN CALENDAR Upcoming tours * The grand opening of the Latah County Master Gardeners Demonstration Garden in Moscow, Idaho, is Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. Admission is free. Story, Page D7. * The Inland Empire Water Garden and Koi Society will hold its second annual tour July 18 at 10 area yards. Tickets are $5, available at the homes; for a list of tour locations, see the preview story July 16 in IN Life. * The Associated Garden Clubs of Spokane 14th annual Yard and Garden Tour is Aug. 1 at six Spokane homes. Tickets are $5, available at the homes; for a list of tour locations, see the preview story July 30 in IN Life. * The Spokane Community College Ornamental Grass Garden Tour is Sept. 18. Details of that tour are still being fine-tuned.

2. GARDEN TOUR Information The Spokane Master Gardener Tour includes four yards, open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are $6 and are available in advance at many local plant nurseries and at all the yards on the tour. Master gardeners will be on hand at all of the yards on the Spokane Master Gardener Tour to answer questions and give planting demonstrations. Take along a notebook to record the names of plants in which you are interested. Most of the plants in the tour yards will have identification tags with botanical and common names. A camera is also a good idea for documenting landscaping ideas. The homes are in urban neighborhoods, so remember to be respectful of the neighbors when parking and walking to and from the tour homes.