cathy’s garden: ‘rustic abundance’ · when the time came to choose plants for the new yard,...

You’ll know you’ve found it when you see the roadside honor stand and the banner advertising “CATHY’S CORNER”. If you arrive in late spring, you will be rewarded with the colorful sight of aromatic bouquets of Sweet Pea flowers. During the summer and fall months, you’ll find a variety of vegetables, herbs, seasonal flowers, and farm fresh eggs.

When Cathy and Doug moved here twenty-four years ago with their three young children, there was one small vegetable garden behind the house, another behind the old water tower and a few scattered fruit trees around the property. Over time, they planted more apples, peaches, pears, and lemon trees. Doug planted Pinot Noir grapes and began dabbling in wine making. Recently they added several olive trees.

After Cathy retired 6 years ago, her love of garden-ing and growing her own food led her to launch Cathy’s Corner. Cathy’s focus is on cultivating heirloom plants, for their unique tastes and in an effort to preserve their genetic history from generation to generation. She harvests the bounty from raised beds, wheelbarrows, open ground, and straw bales distributed throughout the one-acre property.

Habitat plants in the garden, like the zinnias and sunflowers she sells at the stand, serve a dual purpose by at-tracting beneficial insects that help detract plant predators. “I never have to spray to control pests,” she asserts, “The

plants take care of themselves.”

A bundle of enthusiasm, Cathy takes full advantage of the abundance of unobstructed sunlight that shines on her south-facing back yard. Any time of year, you can find young seedlings in the shelter of the potting shed, in the greenhouse under a window frame, or on exterior shelv-ing units that might be covered with shade cloth or frost protection cloth, depending on the season. She nurtures the plants through every stage of a full life and carefully saves their seeds for the next growing year.

Her garden is a working farm; everything growing in their yard has a food-related purpose. “I don’t go to the store for produce that often,” says Cathy, “we eat mostly from the garden.” In the winter months, they continue to enjoy the bounty of the garden from vegetables that have either been canned or frozen.

UC MASTER GARDENERS OF SONOMA COUNTY BLOOMIN’ BACKYARDS AUTUMN GARDEN TOUR

Cathy’s Garden: ‘Rustic Abundance’

On a walking tour of Florence Street in Sebastopol, you’re sure to encounter the fanciful scrap-metal sculpture of a white rabbit, clad in a vest and carrying a pocket watch, perched on a rise above the sidewalk. You’ve also discovered the home of Anne and Simon Lowings. Stop and admire the array of textures and colors you can see on the hill before your eyes—the dusty rose flowers of sedum Autumn Joy, the spiky green-leafed blades of Dasylirion, the amber sedge, the blue-green yucca, the tightly-wound spiral formed by black-tipped aloe leaves, and the ground-hugging pudgy leaves of yellow and red Delosperma cascading over the low retaining wall.

Now climb three stairs past the butterfly bush and follow the path to the back yard, an urban oasis of drought-tolerant plants. Less than eight years ago, when the Lowings first bought their house, this yard was a flat wasteland of asphalt, with a side yard covered in a layer of gravel over black plastic. For two years, they toiled to first uncover the depleted soil and then haul in loads of compost and mulch to bring it back to life. They shaped dirt mounds and accented them with fieldstone boulders for visual interest, then added meandering paths.

Initially, Anne wanted to recreate her grandmother’s English cottage garden, but a mid-winter trip to the Huntington Botanical Garden in Pasadena opened her eyes to the exotic world of arid climate plants. “The succulents

were so colorful, with interesting forms and textures. Back home, the perennials in my garden had died back, the roses nothing but bare sticks. I asked myself why was I working so hard on something that looks awful for five months of the year.”

Inspired, Anne went off on a new tack, collecting a wealth of plants from friends and strangers, even once rescuing some yuccas from an overgrown median. Take time to linger and enjoy the plant diversity packed into a relatively small area. For structure, there’s Garrya elliptica with its wavy leaves and silk tassels, arching branches of Grevillea, and fragrant osmanthus. Star jasmine, hon-eysuckle and purple clematis intertwine over the arbor. And everywhere you’ll find a multitude of succulents and agaves, planted in the ground, around and under the larger shrubs, and in earthen pots arranged on the porch and at the edges of the yard. Anne’s collection of plants has evolved into a garden of serene beauty that requires water only twice a month, even during our dry summers.


Anne’s Garden: ‘Not the Usual’

When Sylvia Tether and Jim Bieda decided to move to Sebastopol, they looked for a home that could accommo-date the many out-of-town friends who would visit them in Wine Country. They fell in love with and eventually bought a property with a one-story home to grow old in, a large yard for their Labradoodle, and expansive views that include Mt. St. Helena in the distance. While they had planned on spending time to make the interior of their house more comfortable, after moving in they realized how much more time and energy would be needed to manage their almost two acres of land. In addition to the house with its views, their new property included a small orchard, a chicken coop, an arbor covered with grapevines, and a large fenced-in area of weed-infested, raised veggie beds.

Initially, Sylvia and Jim were not sure what to do with their yard. “It was an overwhelming blank slate,” according to Sylvia, so she enlisted a well-known local designer to help them visualize the layout. The area transformation began with the removal of the arbor and fencing. Workers brought in truckloads of dirt, then graded and sculpted it to create a spacious foundation for a flagstone patio. On the gentle slope beside the patio, the workers added flat stone pathways and a wandering dry creek bed of river rocks. Another gravel path leads away from the patio to a fire pit, and then beyond, to four stainless steel water troughs that are planted with all the vegetables the couple

needs.

An Arbutus marina and four olive trees that had been growing farther away from the house were transplanted around the new patio area, to provide shade and visual interest. To suppress weeds and invasive grasses growing between the trees in the orchard, Sylvia laid down sheet mulch—a layer of cardboard covered first with dirt and then a layer of shredded bark.

When the time came to choose plants for the new yard, Sylvia knew she wanted plants that are both low-mainte-nance and drought-tolerant. She and the designer scoured local nurseries to find just the right plants. “We had fun,” recalls Sylvia, “It was like clothes shopping for your yard.” After installing a drip irrigation system, they placed small boulders and whimsical sculptures made by local artists among the plants.

Sylvia and Jim’s guests are now welcomed into an outdoor living space where they can relax and enjoy the spectacular view, sit around the fire pit, or stroll around the charming rural garden.


Sylvia’s Garden: ‘Simply Elegant’

The house on two acres that Sue Ann and John Cal-meyer bought twenty-six years ago came with a field full of sheep right outside their back door. They also had a spectacular view of rolling fields, hills, and mountains far beyond to the east that inspired Sue Ann’s vision of the garden-to-be. “We had such a large area to work with, I wanted to create proportionally large areas, to avoid tight-ness,“ Sue Ann explains. Over time, the garden evolved into an assortment of outdoor spaces, or rooms, designed to satisfy a variety of purposes.

The most obvious room is the greenhouse, with actual walls, doors, and a mash-up of recycled found windows. Here, Sue Ann propagates succulents before moving them outside. A potted banana tree flourishes in the corner and, off to the side, a Ponderosa lemon tree towers, producing a year-round source of fruit.

Stroll the grounds outside the greenhouse to find more rooms. A row of purple sage provides nectar for bees and hummingbirds and borders a circle of chairs around an outdoor fire pit for cool evening gatherings. Nearby, three raised beds are dedicated to strawberries, green leafy veg-etables, and dahlias. Closer to the house, three Ceanothus shrubs have grown together to form a fragrant draping hedge of vivid blue blooms in the spring. A few steps away, a low wall outlines a wide flagstone patio with table and chairs for outdoor dining, graced with a potted Meyer

lemon and a kumquat that, when in bloom, scent the air with citrus aromas.

Look north past the patio to the sunflower grove that flanks a path to the monkey bars for more private spaces. There you’ll find a raised bed of golden raspberries that provides a living wall for another smaller room. Behind the raspberries, lounge chairs wait for someone to relax while the next generation plays close by on the swing set. Blueberries and apple trees are also planted in this area.

In the midst of a hot West County autumn, you’ll find cool shade in the small grove of redwoods that began as 1-inch seedlings in the early 1990s. Never watered, the trees thrive on an unseen source of moisture. Wander among them to find a seat where you can chat quietly or meditate in solitude.

Don’t miss the twisted spreading branches of the curly willow tree, where yet another sitting room nestles beneath its leaves, for reading a book while sipping on tea.

When asked what plans Sue Ann has for future garden rooms, she firmly states, “I’ve reached my limit. The rest gets mowed.”


Sue Ann’s Garden: ‘Personal Spaces’

When Gina Hitchcock and her husband, Eric Swan, recently moved here from Napa County, they bought a little over an acre in a semi-rural area south of Sebastopol. With the exception of a two-story house under the oaks on a corner of the property, the former owners left behind few traces of their occupancy. The open land gave them plenty of room to conceive and realize their dreams. “We worked with the existing landscape,” Gina says of their design plans, “The contours and the light suggested where to put things.”

They took advantage of an unobstructed southern exposure to install a lap pool with a deck near the top edge of their property. Under the nearby spreading oaks, Eric installed a paver patio for an outdoor barbeque and dining area and built a gazebo to provide additional shade.

“This land is not going to be a manicured garden,” says Eric, “it’s going to be more like a working farm.” Because they want to grow most of their own food, they put in four rows of steel water troughs to thwart the gophers, just west of the lap pool. They filled most of the troughs with rich soil and installed a drip irrigation system. One trough is a dedicated asparagus bed; another one contains strawberries. They’ve also had success growing peppers, Asian eggplants, tomatoes, squash, artichokes, rhubarb, and green beans. Still another trough now holds a water garden. Behind the kitchen, an herb garden and a citrus tree flourish, planted in more water trough beds.

To provide habitat for insects and birds, but especially to nourish the bees in their backyard beehives, they planted native sages in another raised bed along the property line and fragrant lavender along the edge of the pool.

In the short time since they moved in, they’ve been busy planting trees. A row of olive trees marches down the length of the pool and a variety of citrus trees, including mandarins, tangelos, ruby grapefruit, Lisbon lemon, blood orange, and four types of kumquats will soon bear fruit. In addition to two older Gravenstein apple trees that were on the land when they bought it, they have added fig, pomegranate, a blight-resistant Asian pear, and stone fruit trees—cherries, peaches, and a plum.

Water that flows through the washing machine serves double duty, providing a source of gray water that is directed onto the roses lining the mulch-covered path below the house. Last September, this rose garden became a romantic site, where the couple renewed their vows in front of an intimate party of friends.

With all that they’ve accomplished so far, Gina and Eric can tell you they’ve only just begun. Three sheds are being built, one for gardening, one for chickens, and the last one to shelter the woodpile. Eric has a background in the wine business and hopes to eventually make his own wine from the grapes he wants to plant. Ultimately, they plan to raise a hammock under the maples, where they can lounge and enjoy the fruits of their labors.


Gina’s Garden: ‘Haven for Habitat’

cathy’s garden: ‘rustic abundance’ · when the time came to choose plants for the new yard,...

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