STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
The 4-year-old looked as if she was having the time of her life as she followed the steps that had been created from tree slices as they wound around Kathleen Phelan-Britt’s lawn.
Suddenly, she stopped, trying to figure out her next step when she encountered two that had been covered by dirt.
“Are you lost in the garden?” said her mother who was following.
Lots of people became “lost in the garden” on Saturday as they followed winding trails through garden rooms that showed creative uses of expansive spaces and creative use of tight spaces during the Sawtooth Botanical Garden’s 23rd annual Garden Tour.
Tour-goers followed dozens of little trails winding through Phelan-Britt’s expansive terraces brimming with weeping pea shrubs, Niagara Falls white pines, Vanderwolf’s pine and yellow firecracker loosestrife.
They followed a trail up the hill behind Charlotte and Mike Page’s house to look down on a robust garden plot and children’s sandbox.
And they trekked around Susan and Eric Seder’s home at the bottom of Bald Mountain past a vegetable garden behind a white picket fence to be surprised by one outdoor room after another. Among them, a patio with an eye-popping orange sectional couch, a nook with a hammock sitting next to a lily pond and even a convenient niche for hanging garden tools and providing tomatoes a place to trail up a lattice.
“Who would’ve known this is all back here,” marveled one tour-goer.
“Susan’s the gardener. Eric’s the wheelbarrow,” quipped Helen Stone, who was a volunteer docent.
Gabe Embler crouched on the Page’s patio, piling one river stone on top of another as he created pagodas as tall as he.
“I’d try this in my yard but I’m afraid they’d fall,” one visitor told him.
“For me, it’s a process. I don’t mind if they fall over because then I get to do it again,” Embler told him. “If all the ones I’d built in my yard remained standing, I wouldn’t be able to get through my yard.”
On the other side of the yard, tour-goers came face to face with Embler’s work again—this time over a bridge he’d built out of stones next to a water feature boasting pink sedum and hens and chicken.
“I did it like I do all my other pieces,” Embler said, as one questioned how he could have stacked the stones sideways through the air without having them collapse. “One piece at a time.”
Dozens of people wandered through Jim and Christine Warjone’s wrap-around-the-home garden. The garden offered an array of eye catchers from a herb rack to blue hydrangeas hiding behind towering pink delphiniums and red devil flowers.
Mardi Shepard pointed out cabbage heads the size of soccer balls in the vegetable garden, then encouraged tour-goers to look up to check out the hanging strawberries.
“This is a magical garden—it’s so intimate and so achievable,” she said. “I love how people are having so much fun wandering through all the different areas. And check out the “Before” pictures that Christine put up so we can compare them to what it looks like today.”
Rebecca Waycott stood on the patio of her Tuscan-style home in Warm Springs, fielding compliments and questions.
“Your place is amazing. Thank you for sharing,” one woman told her.
The Waycotts built the house in 2005 after spending numerous years in Latin America.
In the wet of Latin America all Rebecca had to do was cut a piece off a plant and stick it in the ground and it would grow. Here, she said, she’s had to adjust to a garden that blooms only part of the year.
“But I like that it comes back after you cut it down to the ground. To me, that’s miraculous,” she said.
Waycott added that she was heavily influenced by the gardens of England, where she lived as a youngster. She’s been particularly inspired by garden designer Vita Sackville-West.
“One of the things I learned from her is to always have something you can crush for a little scent. I keep scented geraniums on the patio so I can do that.”
Shawna Schmidt called it “an amazing tour.”
“It’s really nice to see the vision of the gardeners and what came of their visions,” she added.
COMING UP:
The Sawtooth Botanical Garden will have its Summer Gala on Aug. 22. This year’s gala will feature a night of live jazz, dinner, drinks and dancing. For tickets, call 208-726-9358 or visit www.sbgarden.org.