Carolyn Jones never had a particularly big garden.
Though she and her husband, Walt, had settled on a large piece of property outside Marysville in 1983, they hadn't done major landscaping.
Then one day in the spring of 2004, Walt Jones found a suspicious lump on his back.
It turned out to be a rare and deadly form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
He had served 19 months in the Vietnam War and was likely exposed to the herbicide Agent Orange, associated with numerous diseases, including non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
That fall, while undergoing an aggressive chemotherapy treatment, he died of complications caused by an infection.
"He didn't die in the war," Jones said. "He died as a result of it later."
Beside herself with grief, Jones didn't know what to do.
"After Walt died that winter," said Jones, an emergency room nurse who's now 56, "I was searching for something."
Online she found TOP Vietnam Veterans, a nonprofit group that organizes trips to Vietnam, called Tours of Peace, to help veterans and their family members find closure.
"Walt would always say, 'It was some of the best times of my life and some of the worst times of my life,' " Jones said of her husband's extended tour of duty in the late 1960s. "I wanted to see what he saw."
Jones applied to the Arizona-based program along with her brother- and sister-in-law, Jim and Sherri Jones, and, after being accepted, they set out with nine other participants for a two-week trip.
Jones bonded closely with the other members of the group and found a deep serenity in seeing the normalcy and peace that had returned to Vietnam as she traced her late husband's footsteps.
"I could see the Marble Mountains as he would have seen them," she said. "We also walked on China Beach. I remember Walt talking about playing tag football on the beach."
After seeing Vietnam in person, Jones suddenly knew what she had to do: She would create an Asian-themed memorial garden for her husband when she returned home.
Because most of the tropical plants of Vietnam wouldn't do too well in the Northwest, Jones settled on a more general Asian theme.
She and her husband already had a Chinese lantern displayed on their deck, and they had planted a Japanese maple about 15 years before, a tree Jones thought would make the perfect centerpiece for the garden.
Where barren land stretched before her in the back yard, Jones dreamed of a meditative place where she could think fondly of her husband, honor his memory, and take in the sights and sounds of Northwest nature.
Jeremy Swearengin and Edy Zelinka with Hidden Springs Landscape and Design of Stanwood helped Jones create that garden exactly.
Visitors enter ceremoniously through an arbor out front. Evergreen shrubs and beautifully arranged planters by Jones, including a trio of containers from Vietnam, line a curvaceous sidewalk between the main house and garage.
In the back yard, an intimate oasis opens up with all kinds of possibilities for exploration: Walk down an inviting path of large flagstones. Step across a small wooden bridge over a dry creek bed of smooth wet stones. Admire the Buddha sitting under the Japanese maple. Hear the faint rattle of bamboo wind chimes. Relax on a quaint bench.
"I wanted the garden to be like a room," Jones said. "I like the quietness. I like to be able to hear the birds."
Dwarf conifers, ornamental grasses, ground covers and shrubs give the garden a year-round lushness in addition to a few specimen trees, including a Japanese snowbell.
"Carolyn had great ideas and a strong vision for how she wanted to remember Walt," Swearengin said. "We just helped her put the pieces together. It's a powerful story."
Creating a place of peace with the feeling of a private room wasn't easy.
Throughout the garden, screens and fences provide the walls of the room while also disguising infrastructure. A bamboo screen hides an electrical box, and the blank back wall of the garage is now lined with bamboo fencing and a string of blue batik pieces, similar to Tibetan prayer flags.
"It is always our goal to help our clients create spaces that are more than just rock, plants and trees," Swearengin said. "Spend only a few minutes with Carolyn and you can see just how much she still loves her husband, and you really get a feeling she was completing this project for him more so than for herself."
Jones selected a special memorial rock for her husband carved with the Japanese symbol for love and the words, "Walt: In Loving Memory."
"I felt so much peacefulness in Vietnam," Jones said. "It's very emotional when you go. The people were so welcoming."
Now that feeling has made a permanent home in Jones' back yard.
"I see it every day when I go to my car," she said. "Every time I sit out here, I get choked up thinking, 'I wish Walt could've seen this.'"
