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World-Class Sculptures and Whimsy Highlight Sawtooth Botanical Garden Tour
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Monday, July 10, 2017
 

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

A door stands at one end of Rick and Cherie Kessler’s lawn, offering a portal onto Cherie Kessler’s  colorful  displays of Asian lilies, bleeding heart, dianthus, geum and  monarda tucked in among birdie condos, flamingoes sprinkled in among pink Cadillacs and hanging flower pails painted with robots.

“For me it’s all about color. It’s all about –Yay!—winter’s over,” said Cherie Kessler. “I have a little bit of white in the garden, such as a few columbine. But everything else is rich in color.”

Kessler’s expansive garden, which is a feast for the eyes, will be one of nine gardens showcased in the Sawtooth Botanical Garden’s 22nd Annual Garden Tour.

This year’s tour—from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, July 15--will feature gardens stretching from Broadway Run near St. Luke’s hospital to Canyon Drive south of Gimlet Road.

It will include a wide range of gardens from Gail Severn’s three-acre sculpture garden underneath the shade of towering aspen to found-art and Ritz-style chicken coops set on what began as a wedding present with a few raised beds.

“After an amazing community event last year with our garden tour north of Ketchum, we are sure this will thrill our guests once again,” said Garden Tour Co-chair Mary Wilson. “This tour showcases what you can do with smaller spaces and larger spaces.

Kessler’s garden has something new to see every time you run your eyes through it. Cherie has long starred in roles with Laughing Stock Theatre and St. Thomas Playhouse and her garden mirrors that with little stages and sets sprinkled throughout the yard.

She repurposed plumbing—bathroom sinks and vanities—as containers for flowers. She turned blue Jacuzzi tubs she got from Building Material Thrift Store for raised vegetable gardens that eliminate bending over and weeding.

A vintage table shaded by an umbrella features an inviting place for respite, while a Braham bed features towering hollyhocks and stargazer lilies. Giraffe heads hang on trees while ornamental dragons and prayer flags festoon a fire pit.

“It’s one of those gardens where the more you look the more you completely fall in love with it,” said Wilson.

“I’ve always loved spiritual art so this has a lot of Asian influence. And I also like quirky stuff,” said Kessler. “Like the cat in the tree—part of my garden is to make you laugh.”

While Kessler’s garden is quirky, Gallery Owner Gail Severn’s sculpture garden is meditative. Seven said it was a hard year on the roses, but she has so many other flowers a-bloom, it’s hard to know what you’re missing.

Footpaths wind past peonies, blue Himalayan poppies and spring daffodils leading to nooks featuring sculptures by world renowned artists.

Marguerite daisies bloom in front of a pond boasting lily pads. And, when three aspen tree were damaged severely in a thunder cell burst, Severn made lemonade out of lemons by lopping off the tops of the trees and topping them with birdhouses.

“In this valley there are so many beautiful gardens, but a few stand out and Gail Severn’s is one of them,” said Wilson.

Deanna Schrell, whose oil landscapes were featured at this weekend’s Ketchum Arts Festival, built an equally attractive log and wire corral around her charming vegetable patch, decorating it with intertwined twigs and branches and artistic knick-knacks. The entry arbor boasts four kinds of clematis and sweet peas.

“I have to keep adding to the fence as the elk and deer find ways to get stick their noses in,” said Schrell whose garden has been in place since 1980.

Schrell sows seeds and a few starts in April, then covers the garden with frost cloths and sets the Rain Bird on a timer. She pulls off the frost cloth in late June, unveiling a budding garden that includes sweet strawberries, carrots, peas, mixed greens, horseradish, asparagus and more.

She hasn’t spent a lot of time figuring out which heirloom veggies grow best at her northern latitude.

“Every year I try different experiments. I basically just stick seeds in the ground,” she said. “This year I bought out the seeds at King’s during their closing sale. Sometimes, I mix seeds and see what comes out. Other years I plant them separately.”

While Schrell’s garden patch has been in place since 1980, Sarah and David Woodward started theirs just a few years ago. But it looks as if it’s been there for decades as it’s filed to the brim with daffodils, pink fernlike amethyst astilbes, lilacs, bleeding hearts, clematis and more.

Sarah, an interior designer, worked with her perennial counselor and mother Paige Mercer, on the design, along with Ben Young and Ashley Boand.

A bocce court and sheepherder’s wagon add to the scene, as do fun artsy braces Sarah put around columnar aspen and tipis she designed to keep delphinium upright.

“It’s a good example of what you can do to a get a full looking garden in a short time,” said Wilson.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The 22nd Annual Garden Tour, a fundraiser for the Sawtooth Botanical Garden, will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, July 15.

PARK AND BIKE: Tour goers are encouraged to park at the north end of the St. Luke’s parking lot, the Sawtooth Botanical Garden and the East Fork parking lot and carpool, walk or bike to the gardens. The distance, including driveways, is four miles.

WATER AND FOOD: Water will be available at each of the gardens. The Haven food truck will be selling lunch at the Kessler garden on Canyon garden.

MUSIC IN THE GARDEN: An artist and musician will be stationed in each garden. And several of the gardens will have beautifully displayed table settings arranged by Ketchum Kitchens, Sun Valley Garden Center and Mardi Shepard.

END WITH A PARTY: The tour ends with a party from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Sawtooth Botanical Garden, which showcases native and cultivated plants that flourish at high altitude.

“A lot of people haven’t been here for a couple years. We’ve done a lot of work with things like irrigation and putting flowers in their happy places.  People say it’s the bet it’s ever looked,” said Wilson.

TICKETS: Discounted tickets—$25 for SBG members and $30 for non-members—are available online at www.sbgarden.org through Thursday, July 13.  Tickets bought the day of the tour are an additional $5.

THE BENEFIT: Proceeds from the garden tour will go to the SBG’s educational programs, many of which are free. Among them: a junior master gardener program that opened youngsters’ eyes to potential careers in horticulture and botany. The garden also provides a therapeutic venue for clients of program like Higher Ground Sun Valley, who work on motor skills as they plant petunias.

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