Stroll through stunning outdoor rooms on Snohomish Garden Tour

Janet and Larry Petrovich started with a muddy 2.5-acre mess about 20 years ago.

Over the years, they not only turned it into a masterpiece, they did it with their own four hands.

Their rural Snohomish property has trails, art, memorial gardens and themed areas.

“Each area is a room or a venue,” Janet said.

You can stroll through their outdoor rooms on Sunday’s Snohomish Garden Tour, which features eight rural and urban gardens in the Snohomish area.

Their place has aspens and banana trees, whimsy and sentiment, relaxation and stimulation.

It includes a grotto, swing, firepit, trail and memorial gardens for their parents.

One venue has tropical foliage around the brightly colored Adirondack chairs that Larry made with old deck boards. “I call them my happy chairs,” Janet said.

Larry made the end tables, too. “She took pictures of the tables at Molbak’s and we built them,” Larry said.

He’s a handy guy to have around.

“Everything you see here, the deck you are sitting on, I’ve built all of this,” he said. “There are two gazebos, a cottage, a greenhouse on the hill. I’ve built all of that stuff. The yard art comes out of my shop.”

The 8-foot metal flower was a birthday present he made for Janet.

“There are 600 pounds of concrete holding this thing up,” he said.

The couple recycle and repurpose items. They collect plants on travels. People give them stuff. They buy plants at conservation sales.

They use everything nature gives them. Fallen trees were used to frame a long walking trail that winds around the back of the property.

“I tell people I built that because I was tired of paying taxes on land that I couldn’t even walk on,” Larry said.

“We probably walk that trail a couple times a day. You’re out here working in the garden and you’ve been bent over and sweating and tired of what you’re doing, so you take a break and walk that trail. It’s cool and shady back there.”

Their dog, Jackson, usually is with them. Inside and outside, they are a trio as much as a couple. They sign email “Larry, Janet and Jackson.”

Larry and Janet both had successful and demanding careers in purchasing. She was living in Mill Creek and he in Covington when they married in 1997.

“We took a map and I drew circles from Mill Creek and Covington: 10 miles, 25 miles, 40 miles. And wherever the circles crossed. we went looking because that was fair,” he said. “Needless to say, they didn’t cross here.”

Somehow they found their way here, in an area off the beaten path in southeast Snohomish.

“It was a construction site,” he said. “It was Lot 12.”

They put down 30,000 square feet of sod, but they didn’t put in an irrigation system.

The themed gardens evolved over time.

“It’s like decorating a house. You don’t try decorating a whole house at one time,” Janet said. “It taught me patience. I didn’t have much before.”

It’s a labor of love, and one that takes a lot of hands-on watering.

“We have friends who think we work way too hard,” she said. “We just look at each other and smile. To us, it’s not work. It’s wonderful to share it.”

Did they have a plan for all this?

“Absolutely not,” Janet said. “We made mistakes, lots of them. A lot of trial and error.”

Some mistakes were bigger than others.

“We should have left those aspens in Colorado,” she said. “Talking about mistakes, that’s definitely one of them.”

Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @reporterbrown.