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Raised beds are edged with recycled chunks of concrete taken from an old driveway. An assortment of dwarf perennials fills the cracks in the flagstone patio.
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Pounding the Pavement
Cathy's resourcefulness extends well beyond flowers and T-shirts. Early in her garden's development, she wanted to build raised beds for her plants to give them better soil and drainage. She could have bordered the beds with brick, cut stone, or even slate, but these materials would have run up a tidy bill. So instead, she and Stewart got their edging free. How was that? When the couple moved into their home, a concrete-strip driveway connected their house to a detached garage. They decided to use the garage for storage, so then the driveway became expendable. Stewart promptly took a sledgehammer and broke the expanse of concrete into big chunks.
Then Cathy and Stewart fashioned the concrete pieces into curving, low, stacked retaining walls. ("We were a lot younger then," she notes with a chuckle.) Because the concrete chunks aren't mortared, they can be rearranged at any time. Plus, according to Cathy, an unbelievable number of plants sprout in the cracks between the concrete, including yellow corydalis, Japanese painted fern, and all sorts of sedums. The recycled edging looks great, and all it cost was a little sweat.
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Cathy and Stewart built this simple pond in a corner of the patio.
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Got a Weekend? Get a Pond.
For most folks, adding a water feature means calling a contractor and shelling out cash. Once again, the Umphreys did neither. Instead, they did the work themselves, putting a small, formal pond, measuring 3 feet wide, 5 feet long, and 18 inches deep, in a corner of the patio. Cathy and Stewart dug most of it out over the course of a weekend. In subsequent weekends, they installed a black plastic liner, edged the pond with handsome Belgian blocks mortared together to hold and hide the liner, and filled the pond. Then they added plants, such as water lilies, water hyacinths, and Japanese iris, which help to keep the water clear.
Cathy believes that small, formal ponds like hers are a good fit for most folks. They're easy to build and maintain, and they often seem less out of place within a garden. "Natural" ponds, on the other hand, are harder to do because they don't always look very natural where people put them.
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above, left: It's a total free-for-all in Cathy's vegetable garden, where beans, Swiss chard, kale, and lettuce vie for space with volunteer flowers.; above, right: A fencerow brimming with snapdragons, larkspurs, and poppies weaves a colorful thread between cherry trees and the vegetable garden.
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Veggies and Flowers
As noted before, cottage gardening means lots of plants in a little space. So it comes as no surprise that Cathy gives her larkspurs, poppies, and purple coneflowers nearly as much room as the Swiss chard and onions. "The vegetable garden is my favorite," she says. "It's where I can really experiment. Every year I try different tulips; they are really fun in a vegetable garden because there's not a lot going on there when they come up. I like using yellow and burgundy tulips to play off the bronze and chartreuse of the lettuce." Asked to sum up her garden in a few words, Cathy replies, "It's a place of wild experimentation where I am free to play."
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Orange Is Okay
Cathy won't commit to a favorite color but does put in a good word for orange. "It's one of the least popular garden colors because people think it's gaudy," she says. "But no one thinks sunsets are gaudy." She urges folks to try "nice, clear oranges paired with soft golds, chartreuse, apricot, and even lavender."
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