Garden tour: a mixture of old and new

The Willow Garden Club hosted its annual tour of gardens on Saturday, July 17, visiting six local gardens before ending the tour at Les Brake's Coyote Gardens annual open house.

While about half the gardens were repeat stops from previous tours, the other half were newer gardens that demonstrated how even less-experienced gardeners' efforts can pay off in a relatively short time.

The tour began with a brief 10 a.m. gathering at the Willow Community Center. Maps were distributed and car pooling was encouraged. Tour-goers then loaded into their cars and followed their maps to the first stop on the tour, the home of Helma and Rod Spencer.

The Spencers' Nancy Lake gardens are spectacular, with one fabulous garden area bordering the edge of their property and another large area displaying a variety of plants and flowers between their home and the lake. Spencer said she has been working on the area for about five years.

"It's a start," she said modestly.

Willow Garden Club president Dorothea Taylor was a little more vocal about the place.

"When I went into their garden, I thought 'A weed would not dare show its blade here,'" Taylor said. "And those red lilies, they were really something."

Stuart and Katherine Bigler's home, also on Nancy Lake, which has been on the Willow garden tour in the past, was the next stop. Bigler also had lots of color in his beds along the walkway to a flawless front lawn on the lake.

The landscaping around the lake side of his home was magnificent, with beds in front of the porch filled with large blooming perennials. Bigler's hanging baskets, apparently his pride and joy, were brimming and full with marvelous begonias and other Alaskan favorites.

At Jim and Kathy Huston's Alaskan Host bed and breakfast, a massive rock wall in front of their large pond was the dominant attraction. With more than 200 acres of property to take care of, the Hustons stay busy maintaining the many lawns and garden beds around their home. This was the Hustons' second year to be on the tour.

"It's hard work getting ready. The first year we were busy buying and planting all the flowers for the rock area," Kathy Huston said. "This year, the hardest part was doing the weeding. It seems that is the best plant I have in my garden!"

The group stopped for lunch on Dorothea Taylor and George Murphy's front lawn on Long Lake. Folks brought their own bag lunches and sat in the light drizzle on chairs, benches and blankets beneath

the birches at "The Birches," the name Taylor and Murphy have given to their lakefront property.

Taylor, who has been active in the club for about 10 years, has served as the group's president for several years. She regularly hosts the lunch stop along the annual tour. She spoke about the most obvious changes to her garden this year.

"Last year, we had the driveway put in all the way down to the lake, and that's a big new garden area for us," Taylor said. "I am still using annuals there, until I get my dirt the way I want it, but have started to use some perennials, too. My roses are just getting going, and I really have some really nice roses this year. The strawberries are huge this year -- we've been having berries since June. My double-fringe Shasta daisies made it, I've been working with them for some time, and they were there, in all their glory."

After lunch, the caravan moved up Willow-Fishhook Road to the home of Vicky and Keith Stephens, where an extraordinary artichoke plant was the main attraction. That, and Stephens' innovative rock wall design for her vegetable garden were the highlights of the stop. Stephens' garden was a good example of just how much produce a lot of hard work can produce.

"I am not used to that many people, it was a little overwhelming, but it was fun," Stephens said. "For me, I just love to garden and my garden shows that. I focus on the vegetables, and it's nice because the kids can go out and pick peas and carrots and have a good snack."

The next stop on the tour was the garden of Cindy and Axel Hansen, where the couple displayed their new-found passion for gardening with attractive beds and borders. This is the couple's second year working on the garden.

"We've hauled in a lot of rocks from the surrounding area," Axel Hansen said, "and planted some trees behind the garden to help keep the willows and weeds back. And Cindy put in the new bed as you first come on to the property. It's a work in progress, no doubt."

"When you have a beginning garden, it's always fun to visit because you get to see how much it changes and takes shape over time," Dorothea Taylor said. "We'll be visiting this garden again."

This year, the garden tour was well-attended and Taylor deemed it a real success.

"I stopped counting at 60 people," Taylor said, "which is more than we have ever had. It really went very well, and the credit for that should go to Penni Ann Cross, our tour director."

The group made a final stop at Les Brake's Coyote Gardens, which coincided with his annual open house, something he has been doing every summer since 1993. Brake opens his renowned English-style gardens to the public as a fund-raiser for the Willow Garden Club and the Alaska Botanical Garden.

More than 600 people visited Coyote Gardens over the two-day event this year, raising $3,000 in donations to be split between the two organizations.

"It's always a fun weekend," Brake said. "It's something I used to read about in books, something the English gardeners did. It seemed like most of their money was donated to nurses' groups or other good works. I always wanted to do it, and I thought it would be a good way to support the local garden club and also a way to do something for the Alaska Botanical Garden. I live so far away, I don't get to do much for them."

"It's our biggest fund-raiser, it definitely is," said Taylor about the Coyote Gardens event. "And it is a nice way to end the tour."

Brake, who is celebrating 20 years of gardening in Alaska this summer, has an impressive, giant garden that never fails to delight visitors. Brake said the garden is really flourishing with the wonderful weather the area has been experiencing this summer.

"We are having the most amazing garden ever," Brake said. "We knew gardens could bloom late in Alaska, but never early. There was no frost in May, so we had no setbacks, and we had excellent snow cover last winter, so we lost nothing. And we are still seeing the results of last year's warm summer, with the buds having another good season. We are just amazed at how full the garden is."

Volunteers from both of the benefiting organizations help Brake with the open house, and two friends, Karin Covey and Jaime Rodriguez, help with the garden tours.

"I think they both know every plant in the garden, which is wonderful. They really help out a lot. People just buzz around them like bees, asking questions," Brake said.

In addition to the garden tour, the Alaska Botanical Garden also sells T-shirts and memberships at the event. For the past several years, local artists have also set up booths to offer their wares to those attending the open house. Brake's partner, Jerry Conrad, sells his exceptional rustic-twig furniture at the event as well.

"I try to keep any items that are being sold related to flowers and plants, although there are a few exceptions," said Brake of the booths. "And we ask anyone who sells anything to donate toward the expenses of the food and other costs, so that everything that comes in from the gate goes directly to the two groups.

"We really don't focus on the booths," Brake added, "it's just sort of happened. One reason people are fond of this event is because it's very low pressure, and I want to keep it that way. But I think people enjoy browsing through the booths. Everything is such nice quality and is usually garden-related, and a lot of people really seem to enjoy shopping -- but it is really not the focus of the event."