a tale of two gardens -cha cha
by Carol Brock

Visit two Boulder gardens that are enchanting and enchanted.

The green oasis surrounding Cha Cha’s tiny Boulder Victorian home harbors more than violets and red-hot pokers. “It’s a fairy garden,” Cha Cha says. In fact, seven fairies inhabit her yard, which overflows with flowers, statues, birdhouses, mirrors and fountains.

A local metal artist, Cha Cha learned of the magical beings when a woman performed an energy clearing before a wedding to be held that day in her yard. “She said, ‘Do you know seven fairies live here?’ I replied, ‘Well, I hope you invited them to the wedding,’ and she said, ‘Oh yes, they’re all here!’” Cha Cha says with a Cheshire grin. “I guess I’ve lived in Boulder long enough to expect anything.”

Fairies aside, Cha Cha’s garden is a shady retreat devoted to art created by her and others. Metal statues of women abound, clothed only in brilliant strands of beads. “I have a lot of naked lady sculptures,” says Cha Cha, whose artistic talents extend to calligraphy and multimedia installations. In the front yard, a male statue sporting a carnation boutonniere and holding an American flag with a peace sign greets passers-by. He’s modeled after a friend whom Cha Cha had lie on the floor so she could trace his outline onto paper. “I later sold that statue and he called me up saying, ‘You can’t sell me without letting me buy myself first!’ So I bought back the original to give to him and made another for the buyer.”

She’s currently crafting ceramic plant/bug sculptures—“they morph from plants to bugs,” Cha Cha explains—with small indentations for birdseed and water. She’ll mount these on stakes “so the smaller birds can have something to eat because they get chased from the feeders by the bigger birds.”

Cha Cha’s art blends comfortably with the plants in her garden, which she often uses in recipes. She steeps lemon balm and peppermint for summer tea and tosses sage, savory and lettuce into culinary creations. Tea roses, daisies, geraniums, petunias, columbines, red-hot pokers, forget-me-nots and cosmos colorfully offset areas dedicated to all-white blossoms. “I love moon gardens,” Cha Cha says, “so I planted a lot of white flowers by the dinner table where I eat at night so I can see them in the moonlight.” These delicate beauties include alyssum, white geraniums, light-colored petunias, and white-and-lavender pansies.

deciphering dilemmas
When Cha Cha’s not busy planting flowers and art in her garden, she scrutinizes it with an artist’s eye, coming up with creative solutions for problems. For example, she invented an “unwanted plant remover”—a tall metal tool with a curlicue top and a forked bottom like a dandelion digger—to remove weeds and other unwelcome plants. “I knew [Boulder herbalist] Brigitte Mars would kill me if I put anything on the dandelions,” she says, “so I leave them in various locations around the yard to pull up pesky plants.” The device doubles as a hose guard, confining its path and preventing it from crumpling precious plants.

By the way, those pesky dandelion flowers often end up coated in cornmeal, flour, salt and pepper, and sautéed in olive oil. “The closest taste I can equate them to is mushrooms,” says Cha Cha, who got the recipe from Brigitte, of course, and is steering her garden toward “grazing” with more edible flowers and herbs.

Another problem involved a variegated-tin porch roof. Cha Cha disguised it with sheer curtains and twine-ball lights, “so the shimmering takes your eye away from the ugly tin.” If you glance around her refuge, you’ll also notice an assortment of glass rocks glinting in dappled light. “I put them where things won’t grow or there’s not enough color,” explains Cha Cha, who buys melted-down remnant glass from El Karma, a rock shop near Salida, Colo. “They’re great for shady areas because you don’t have the palette that you would in a sunny garden, and the glass brings in elements of color and reflectivity.”

Decorative mirrors strung on fences amplify the shine. “I’m an avid yard saler and I love to buy mirrors,” Cha Cha admits. A door-size one is mounted on a log cabin in the backyard that predates her 1899 Victorian. “It’s so Alice in Wonderland,” she says, “in that its reflection creates an imaginary portal.”

Other yard-sale items, dozens of Colorado license plates dating to the ’60s, were tacked to her garage for “funk appeal.” “I’ve even heard people walk by and comment on how cool they are,” says Cha Cha, who willingly accommodates the many strangers and friends who want to paint or photograph her garden, discuss plants and art, and even practice tai chi in her yard.

A different activity Cha Cha’s garden fairies would certainly approve of is the tea party she holds each spring for female friends. Participants sit on tree stumps and sip tea in an ethereal world she creates by wrapping trees with muslin and dressing a table in fine linens and china. “We all dress up in tea-party hats and gloves, and eat a candied violet I make with egg whites, vodka and water,” Cha Cha says. “I dip the flower in the mixture, sprinkle it with sugar and let it dry on parchment paper for a week. I call it fairy food.”

With such magical elements, it’s no wonder her tea parties awaken the child in revelers. “The most fascinating thing is, within minutes, everyone reverts to being a little girl,” Cha Cha says. “It never fails, and I’ve been doing these parties for years.”

Now that’s enchanting.

Carol Brock is editor of Boulder County Home&Garden Magazine and a secret admirer of fairies and other foolishness.

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