Fond memories take root in garden

If you’ve never been in Anita Bording’s garden, you wouldn’t know it was there. You might hear the gurgle of the stream or the splash of the double waterfall before you see any garden at all.

Bording’s front yard wouldn’t give away any clues, either, because it’s decorated with stones, a few bushes and a fountain – not much greenery at all.

But when you step onto the back porch of the beautiful home where she’s lived for 58 years, you are transported to an other-worldly place. You are first greeted by an enchanted Japanese garden where you will find the source of the beautiful stream. Bonsai trees and other greenery grace this peaceful section of garden that is overseen by the watchful eye of the statue of Buddha in one corner. An archway leads you down the path to the other half of the garden, full of flowering plants and towering trees.

Bording moved into the small two-bedroom house with her husband, John, in 1949. John was a builder, and as the family grew, so did the house – first back and then up. After three girls and a boy, the Bordings’ family was complete. The garden was just an empty field when the couple moved in, and it slowly evolved, according to daughter Anne Bording Jabreen,

“It was a vegetable garden in the ‘50s, horse pasture in the ‘60s,” Jabeen says. “And when all the children outgrew the horse, we sold the horse, and this land became a garden again in the ‘80s”

Bording remembers planting the bulk of the garden in 1980, the year the ash fell from Mount St. Helens. From those ashes she nurtured a garden and layered it with plenty of roses – her favorite flower. Anne was married in the garden in 1983, when the trees were much smaller, she remembers.

Bording points out two large blue spruces in the center of the back section of her garden. They were planted in memory of her only son, Mark, who was killed when he was hit by a car in 1979. That year, Bording planted the first tree, and in 1980, she planted a second one on the first anniversary of his death. She had planned to plant one each year on that day, but she realized that her garden would soon be overtaken by blue spruce if she planted so many. So they stand tall, reminding her of her strong son taken from her at such a young age.

There is also a patch of garden the girls planted to honor the memory of their father, who died in 2002. It is full of things that remind the family of him. Among the greenery are a wooden bear that they had given him for Christmas one year and a seagull on a tree stump they brought from their vacation cabin on Lake Coeur d’Alene. Grape vines grow along the length of the fence next to John’s garden.

“It was about the only ground left for him to grow things,” says Anita with a smile. “The grapes were his thing,” agrees Anne.

This time of the year, Bording takes time occasionally to sit and enjoy the garden or read a book. To her, however, working with her hands in her garden is therapeutic

“Working is relaxing,” she says.