Labor of Love

A couple transforms a hillside into a garden sanctuary

By Margaret A. Haapoja

Photo by John Gregor, Coldsnap Photography

“I do the basics,” says Duane, “and when I get done, Donna takes over. She’s the one who makes it look so good. It’s a passion she carries through everything she does.” Duane has an artistic eye, too, according to Donna. “People think anyone can work with rocks, but that’s not true,” she says. “Duane just knows how to set a stone. He can give it a tilt here and a twist there so it looks like it’s part of the hillside.” m Both have put their skills to work at the Piedmont Heights home that has been in the Peterson family for three generations. The steep slope behind the house launched this labor of love fourteen years ago, when the foundation of the garage started crumbling. Duane, owner of Superior Construction in Duluth, went to work with a Bobcat and mini-excavator on the tight 145-by-145-foot site. The first summer he built a stone retaining wall. Next, the couple laid out the waterfall and paths and built the decks. m Because much of his business is excavating work, Duane keeps a stockpile of stone. One of the benches in the garden was a granite curbstone from the streets of Superior, Wisconsin. “Duane was working on a job over there, and he saw he could make that stone a part of this garden,” says Donna. “He sees things I would never think of.” m The Peterson yard draws visitors into a landscape seamlessly unified by brick and stone. Donna’s penchant for antiques, rusty metal, and barn board is evident everywhere, and the teal and burgundy of the house are repeated on the garage, gazebos, potting shed, pergolas, and playhouse. They had a rough plan when they began, but Duane prefers to keep his options open and modify the plan as he goes along. “You have to stay fluid,” he says. “Go with it instead of fighting it.”

He built a storage shed high above the hillside garden to define the corner of their property and decided to build a waterwheel after seeing pictures of one. “The trouble was getting the size right,” he says, admitting he built three before he was satisfied. “Something too small didn’t look right, and something too large can overwhelm everything else.”

During the early stages of the garden, Donna’s mother died of cancer. Donna was understandably devastated, so she threw herself into the project for peace and comfort. “Gardening just saved me from my grief,” she says. “There’s something elemental about working with the earth.” Friends brought plants as memorials, and the hillside garden became “Grandma’s Garden,” Donna’s last gift from her mother..

The couple continued fashioning their peaceful sanctuary, adding one area after another, from the hillside garden with its cascading waterfall, potting shed, waterwheel, and convoluted paths to the rock garden, bricked driveway-turned-patio, grassy lawn and perennial beds, and shade garden and borders at the front of the house. Donna has few weeds in her gardens; they’re too crowded with plants. “I pretty much plant every square inch,” she says. “I like the layered look—the large trees, the understory trees, the shrubs, and perennials. I want all the color, all the interest, I can get.”

Photo by John Gregor
Coldsnap Photography

Donna knew nothing about gardening when they began, so she drew inspiration from magazines and books. She became a Minnesota Master Gardener in 1997 and worked for Pedersons’ Gardens and Landscapes in Superior, Wisconsin, for several years. She says she’s gone through several phases, but she describes her current garden style as casual. “I think my eye has changed,” she says. “I‘m getting a better feel for textures and design. At first, all I was worried about was short, medium, tall. Now I don’t want that monotony. I love the spontaneity of self-seeding. There are no rules or regulations here.”

One of her favorite combinations is chartreuse and burgundy, partly because the colors harmonize with the house. “I think people tend to forget that their house and garden should complement one another,” she says. Donna weaves purple and pink through her plantings to unite the gardens. She starts impatiens from seed every spring and pops them into all her beds, further unifying the space. “I’d never be without impatiens,” she says. “It’s a workhorse, and you don’t have to deadhead it.”

Like most gardeners, Donna copes with deer and slugs. She knows where deer normally enter the yard, so she sprays Liquid Fence and hangs Zest soap on either side of their trail. To deter slugs, she plants only thick-leaved hostas and mulches beneath them with pine needles. She also sprinkles Sluggo (non-toxic to her dogs), pours beer into tuna cans, edges her hosta beds with chicken grit, and experiments with copper tape.

Butterflies flutter from flower to flower among the lush plantings. As a member of the North American Butterfly Association, Donna incorporates butterfly plants like pearly everlasting, anise hyssop, Joe Pye weed, purple coneflower, liatris, monarda, and milkweed into her gardens. She and a friend also tend the butterfly garden at the Benedictine Health Center, where her mother spent her last days.

Donna plants in everything from old galvanized pails and huge terra cotta tubs to wicker cornucopias and a succulent wreath she’s grown for seven years. She fertilizes her containers weekly with water-soluble Miracle-Gro (15-30-15), and sprinkles 10-10-10 on her beds in the spring. She amends her soil with leaf compost she makes herself with an anniversary gift from her husband. “I told him I didn’t want a diamond ring for my anniversary,” she says. “Forget that bauble stuff—I wanted a chipper-shredder.”

Every Mother’s Day, her gift from Duane and their two sons is a garden project such as the rock garden, the flagstone patio, and the stone aggregate pathway. Next on Donna’s wish list is a canyon, and Duane is dreaming of a swinging bridge.

Meanwhile, Donna takes pleasure in everyday gardening chores like watering. “You really enjoy your plants when you’re standing there watering them and analyzing whether they’re doing well,” she says. “It’s kind of therapeutic. Too often we’re so busy rushing around that we don’t take time to appreciate our gardens.”

Donna’s Gardening Tips

• Use dwarf trees, arbors, or obelisks to give gardens vertical lines.
• Gardening is trial and error. If you don’t like a plant, just remove it.
• Don’t be afraid to move plants. Do it on a cool, overcast day, and water transplants generously for a week or so.
• Fill bare spots in the garden with potted plants.
• Use fences to stop the eye from wandering into the neighbor’s yard.
• Set a welcoming tone with pathways that beckon visitors into the garden.
• Fertilize container plants with a slow-release fertilizer when you plant the pots and weekly thereafter with a water-soluble fertilizer.
• Seed zinnias into containers as late as July, water well and, by the end of August or early September, you’ll have a pot in bloom just when gardens are fading.
• Use bagged leaves to protect your perennials for the winter.
• Let annuals like nigella, calendula, morning glories, cosmos, and larkspur reseed so you don’t have to plant them every year.

Margaret Haapoja is a freelance writer in Bovey.
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