Gardening: Tilley mixes practical, whimsical elements in Lake Spokane yard

Gabriele Tilley’s garden style can be summed up as reduce, reuse and recycle. Her Lake Spokane garden is a wonderful collage of repurposed yard sale finds, castoff building materials and an eclectic mix of recycled and bargain plants set off by choice finds from the Friends of Manito plant sales. Her creativity won her the August Garden of the Month from The Inland Empire Gardeners.

Tilley’s garden is a mix of practical and whimsical. On the south end of her lakeside lot is a well-organized vegetable garden where she grows 13 varieties of pumpkins and squash as well as several varieties of tomatoes, beans, raspberries and a smattering of other goodies. In one corner she keeps a hive of bees, mostly for their pollinating services. The entire garden is mulched with lawn clippings.

Being right on the lake and with a huge rock wall right next to her garden, Tilley says she doesn’t have any problems with early frosts. “The rocks and the water keep it warm here.”

She has perfected pumpkin growing and has taken grand champion the last two years at the Spokane Interstate Fair. “I didn’t set out to win, I just looked at the winners one year and said, ‘I could do that,’ ” Tilley said. “My favorite pumpkin is Cinderella.”

At one edge of her vegetable garden is a wonderful garden shed built entirely from recycled and repurposed lumber, mostly old fences. “I would drive around looking for old fencing and ask for the wood,” she said. “I was in heaven when I found a salvage place where I could buy a whole truckload for $5.”

Her salvaging wasn’t confined to building materials, though. The Tilleys built their house about nine years ago after living just three houses away on the same road. As construction progressed, Tilley began digging up plants at her old house and wheelbarrowing them to their new home. “The neighbors thought it was pretty funny.”

The garden around her house and down to the waterline is a wonderful mix of colorful perennials, shrubs, conifers and ground covers laid into settings of basalt boulders. Tilley comes by the perennials naturally; she’s the plant sale set-up coordinator for the annual Friends of Manito sales. “I have a little of everything in the garden because I have such a mix of sun and shade.”

Around the front of the house Tilley has two small water features that offer up the gentle sound of flowing water and also provide birds with drinking and bathing water. In another nod to reusing and recycling, she created a water feature out of an old wheelbarrow in one of the rock plantings.

Not one to shy away from a challenge, Tilley maintains one of the best collections of endless summer hydrangea I’ve seen here. The secret, she says, is living right on the water where it stays warmer.