Cheryl Durham wasn’t sure how gardening on a steep slope would work.
But something about the Everett bungalow with mountain and city views spoke to her.
“My friends told me not to buy this property,” said Durham, an associate broker for Windermere Everett South.
Durham, however, was determined to purchase the home and create a garden paradise, despite its challenging hillside location.
Now, six years later, Durham’s elaborately landscaped oasis is a one-of-a-kind showpiece, packed with whimsy and a clear passion for plants.
Her Federal Avenue garden will be one of six open to the public on Saturday for the 10th annual Gardens of Merit Tour to benefit the Evergreen Arboretum &Gardens in Everett.
Durham couldn’t be happier with her vast collection of ornamental and edible plants as well as outdoor areas for entertaining and pathways for easy exploration.
“I want people to think, ‘Oh, I wish I had a hill,’ ” Durham said on a recent walk through her colorful garden.
Durham worked with the slope of the property to create a variety of dramatic spaces.
That includes a recently completed series of small patios, built in tiers on her home’s south side.
“I call this area the terraces,” she said of the patios, punctuated with matching ceramic pots overflowing with white-blooming bacopa. “This whole thing was mud with some gravel on top.”
Before walking down the steps next to the terraces to reach the back yard, tour visitors should check out the front yard, featuring a circular paver patio built with a kit from Pacific Stone Co. in Everett, a burbling rock pillar water feature and a weeping lime-green Japanese maple.
Durham’s back yard features plenty of tricks and ideas to steal, too.
On the south end, a potting shed features a handy outdoor table with a built-in plastic tub filled with soil, covered and dry, waiting for Durham’s next project.
Beyond the shed is a thriving vegetable and herb garden, complete with an oilcloth-covered picnic table on a bed of blond wood chips, ready for an outdoor feast.
Follow the flagstone path to the left and you’ll find yourself under an elaborate pergola lined with party lights. Here another dining area awaits you for tea time, along with an armoire filled with supplies for an afternoon lemonade social.
Purple-flowering clematis winds around the pillars of the pergola while ornamental grasses, perennials and conifers climb the sloped backyard to an expanse of lush lawn.
Coming up around the north end of the back yard is stunning riot of flowers, including a swath of short yellow dahlias plunked in for quick color and brilliantly colored spikes of foxglove and delphinium, too.
There’s also a path under an arbor to the quaint raised vegetable beds of the Port Gardner Neighborhood Association’s Charles Street P-Patch next door, which Durham supplies with water.
Five weeping cherry trees with dramatically peeling brown bark march up the steep area on the north side of the house. All are underplanted with strawberries. Blueberries and raspberries occupy a flat area next to the garage.
Durham has used art liberally in her garden, including a painting of flowers on her potting shed done by her teenage grandchildren.
There are also numerous gazing balls, pinwheels, birdhouses and other metal art pieces, including a rain chain of miniature copper watering cans that hangs from an upper deck.
Durham didn’t accomplish this all at once, of course.
Each year, she and her garden helper, Everett handyman Dan Purcell, have taken on a new project.
Purcell does jobs that require heavy lifting, and Durham does all the planting, weeding and design.
She gets inspiration from garden shows, especially the display gardens at the annual Northwest Flower &Garden Show in Seattle.
Gardening has become more important to Durham than food or clothes over the years.
“I don’t buy a plant,” she said. “I buy flats of plants.”
Only one area of Durham’s yard isn’t finished yet. That’s the sloped area next to the north side of the house. She hopes to put in another shed for utility items along with a greenhouse.
“There’s going to be another chapter,” Durham said of her yard. “I enjoy myself, the house and the yard.”
Sarah Jackson: 425-339-3037; e-mail sjackson@heraldnet.com.
Gardens of Merit
What: Take a self-guided Gardens of Merit Tour of six private gardens and the Evergreen Arboretum &Gardens in Everett. Each stop features art by a different local artist, a new addition to the event to celebrate its 10th year. Proceeds will benefit the arboretum.
See the Friday edition of A&E for more information about the featured artists.
When: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday
Where: Start at American Legion Memorial Park, 145 Alverson Blvd., Everett, where there will be a plant sale at the arboretum from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Cost: Tickets are $10 at the arboretum on the day of the tour and at Pacific Stone Co. and J. Matheson Gifts, Kitchen and Gourmet, both Everett; Emery’s Garden in Lynnwood and Sunnyside Nursery in Marysville.
Information: See www.evergreenarboretum.com or call 425-257-8597.
Where to start
If you’re new to garden design, you might take this simple advice from amateur garden designer Cheryl Durham of Everett.
Start near your front door. Go to a local nursery and pick a few plants that move you. Choose your favorite colors and textures in plants that will work with the soil, light and space conditions in your yard.
Then put them in the ground or pots see what works. What doesn’t work can go somewhere else in the yard.
“Just kind of grow it out from there,” Durham said, adding that if you have a plain, flat back yard, it’s a good idea to build up one corner with soil to create an elevated berm. Plant the berm with your favorite specimens, and you’ll have an instant focal point as well as a starting point to expand in any direction.
Resources
Pacific Stone Co., 3826 Rucker Ave., Everett; 425-258-1911, www.pacificstoneco.com: Circular patio-paver kits include enough pavers to create an 8-foot circle for about $200, plus design instructions from Pacific Stone, which sells sand and edging separately.
Dan Purcell, 425-760-0250 (daytime); 425-317-8907 (evenings): Everett handyman and heavy-lifting gardener at Cheryl Durham’s garden.
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