garden of the month
When Matt and Nancy Bell and their four children found the place to re-establish their Spokane roots, they fell for a wonderful big house with Scandinavian influenced architecture and “a big sand pit, no driveway and weeds 8-feet tall.”
That was six years ago.
Today, the numerous windows of the wonderful airy house look out onto a luscious garden that has a natural woodland feel. So luscious, in fact, that the garden is being honored as the Garden of the Month for June, by The Inland Empire Gardeners.
The Bells have transformed the sand, weeds and scrub pine into an informal eclectic mix of perennials of all kinds, roses, evergreens and trees that cover nearly three acres. Nancy is the chief gardener, organizer and plant person while husband Matt readily admits he’s the chief weeder and land clearer.
“She tells me where to go and what to do,” he says. “But I get to enjoy the garden when she’s done.”
Judge Linda Fairhurst says the garden is “an oasis in the forest. Almost any perennial that grows in Eastern Washington can be found in this garden.”
Just walking to the front door takes you far from the feel of being at someone’s home. Saxifrages, several varieties of hardy geraniums and a myriad of other small perennials spill into the walkway in a manner that makes you pick your way carefully up the steps, just like if you were picking your way up a forest path. Planter boxes filled with annual geraniums hang from the porch railings adding great color and texture to the gray-and-white house. A wind chime tinkles gently in what could be a woodland breeze.
Around the front of the house, perennials spill over and around each other in happy exuberance. Several river birches shade the garden and add their wonderfully textured peeling bark to the visual feast. Delphiniums, hollyhocks and foxgloves rise above the smaller perennials, like lady’s mantle and columbine, giving a feel of ever-changing depth throughout the beds. Climbing roses are scrambling up the porch. “I love how the (Scandinavian feel) of the garden turned out,” says Nancy.
Below the house and main garden, Nancy is extending the garden along long paths that pass through a series of arches, where she has planted climbing roses and shrub roses in between. With time, they will create a wonderful walkway to the garden’s newer parts.
Creating more plants for the garden is almost as much fun for Nancy as creating the garden itself.
Nancy has had her share of challenges keeping the garden intact and thriving though. Deer are constantly nibbling roses and anything else they find appealing, Moose have been known to come through and sample the wares. Nancy takes all this in stride and figures if she plants enough, there will be enough to share.
“I bought a lot of my roses from Geri Kruger (formerly Blossoms and Bloomers) about six years ago and I thought if that lady could (grow roses) with the deer, it was possible for me to do it,” she says.
The other challenge for Nancy is watering. Most of the garden does not have a sprinkler system so it’s done by hand. “I am the main waterer. I don’t mind it because I just water and weed as I go.”