garden gone wild!

This Boulder garden is a riot of summer color, with a method behind the madness.

By Nancy Nachman Hunt

Like most gardeners, Susie Chandler has a need to dig in the dirt—and dig and dig and dig. For the past 12 years, she’s dug in her downtown Boulder plot and the result is a riotous, joyous profusion of color come summertime.

Ambling comfortably along her garden paths, Chandler discusses the many species she’s planted over the years. “Here are the gaillardia,” she says. “I just love them.” Adjacent to the gaillardia, a massive peony holds court. “That’s the white garden,” she says. “I did this area in honor of my grandmother.” She moves on to the herbs, pointing out thyme, parsley and lemon balm. “When you walk through this part of the garden and brush your leg on the lemon balm, it just smells wonderful.”

Indeed, Chandler’s garden is a feast for the senses. In high season, color dominates. Orange, burgundy and purple blooms merge with whites and lavenders interspersed with yellows. Russian and clary sages provide a lacy backdrop for irises, poppies and day lilies. In one corner, yarrow and nasturtium intermingle unceremoniously. A shady area boasts hosta and vinca, while clay patio pots overflow with showy caladiums collared by palpably purple lobelia. Set deep in the shadows of a leafy walnut tree, a German scarecrow—a whimsical metal sculpture created by a friend of German descent—reveals itself if you look closely enough through the tangle of plants.

The backdrop for all her garden color is more color, of course. Chandler painted her home’s exterior terra-cotta red, sunshine yellow and royal blue, and carefully mounted blue wine bottles to the top of the terra-cotta wall to catch the afternoon sun.

At first glance, Chandler’s garden appears wild, as if the colors all sprang from random. But the underlying aesthetic isn’t wild at all, Chandler claims. “It’s more of an organized riot of color; like organized chaos,” she says. Once Chandler defines her garden in those terms, it’s easy to see the inherent plan. Paths define distinct areas, and the small grassy expanses were painstakingly grown from seed instead of sod. “I’m a very organized person in my real-life existence,” she says, “but you have to let go of some of that in the garden.”

That approach is effusively apparent in her front yard, where “it’s all kind of woo-woo,” Chandler says, with roses, sages, ornamental grasses and sunflowers competing for center stage.

Sunny Tributes

In addition to color, Chandler devoted areas of her garden to people who have inspired her. There’s the white garden in honor of her grandmother, an accomplished gardener and botanist who was Chandler’s gardening mentor.

The garden’s many sunflowers honor her father, who was a farmer in southern Illinois. When Chandler moved away from the farm to attend college in Ohio in the 1980s, her father switched from growing corn and soybeans to growing the then more profitable sunflowers. “I’ll never forget seeing a field filled with sunflowers for the first time. It was breathtaking,” Chandler says.

Even her garden’s “hell strip”—that nightmarish area between the sidewalk and street—offered an opportunity to create something unique. With fellow gardener and next-door-neighbor Jennifer Heath, Chandler created a memorial garden for their neighborhood’s beloved late postman, Art Wilkie. The xeric space is filled with lavender, ornamental grasses, fescue and Russian sage.

While Chandler’s garden pays accolades to family and friends, she says her inspiration came from Heath—literally and figuratively. Many a slip of vinca, a clump of iris and a rosebush or two found their way from Heath’s magically overflowing garden to Chandler’s place. Heath modestly accepts the inspiration role. “It’s not like Susie didn’t already have it in her DNA,” Heath says.

The remarkable thing, according to Heath, is that Chandler doesn’t even own her home and instead has rented it for the past 12 years. “She single-handedly turned that place from a trash pit into a beautiful space,” Heath says. “She’s put plants in the ground and painted and done all these marvelous things. That kind of care is, in some ways, very un-modern.”

But Chandler doesn’t mind. “When I moved here I thought, ‘Look at what I’m surrounded by—I live in a house with a yard.’” Chandler took it from there and never looked back.

Nancy Nachman Hunt is a Boulder-based freelance writer who digs in the dirt whenever she can, with varying results.

Read insightful articles, find helpful home and garden tips and links to resources in every issue of Boulder County Home & Garden Magazine. Subscribe today!

© 2006 Brock Publishing Company
homes@brockpub.com