An Inside Look at Shirley Collins's Pacific Northwest Garden
Shirley Collins's stylish little farmstead on Whidbey Island is as much about vegetable artistry as it is about cooking and eating from the garden. She considers the shape, texture, and colors of herbs and vegetables every bit as much as their taste and nutritional value. The Collinses eat from their garden most of the year, which is no small feat on Whidbey Island, an hour's drive and short ferry ride north of Seattle. Between greenhouse, raised beds, coldframes, and densely planted borders, Shirley has created a garden that's both beautiful and productive.
As you'd expect from the founder of the chic and successful kitchenware store Sur La Table (since sold and taken national), Shirley is a visual person. She brings her design skills out of the kitchen into the garden. "It's so much fun to plant vegetables in a way that's pleasing to look at, " says Shirley. From clematis-draped arbors to a flock of laying hens, the Collins garden is both showplace and working farm.
Five years ago, Shirley and her husband, Alf, a former columnist for The Seattle Times, were living in Seattle and spending weekends in a little Whidbey Island beach cabin. A farm stay in France so enchanted the Collinses that when they returned home, they began looking for property on the island. When they found a stucco house on 5½ sunny acres, they moved up the hill from beach to barnyard.
Much of the property is devoted to pastures and greenbelt; the rest is thoroughly planted in raised beds and long, complex ornamental borders filled with roses, hydrangeas, elderberries, perennials, and edibles, many in Shirley's favorite tones of deep purple and gold.
Down the hill from the house, Shirley created a huge pond to attract birds and planted its margins with dogwood, vine maple, and thousands of heather and Mexican feather grasses (Nasella tenuissima) for a casual meadow look. A gazebo stands above the pond, a comfortable shelter for observing the eagles and herons that sweep down to visit the water. It's an ideal spot to take a little rest, if these hard-working gardeners could ever find a spare moment.
"It is a really big garden, " admits Shirley, although she and Alf seem to delight in spending their days caring for 40 chickens, sheep, donkeys, the sweeps of ornamental landscaping, and the raised beds and greenhouse. "It's what I do every day.
Source: www.organicgardening.com
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Perennials for the Pacific Northwest: 500 Best Plants for Flower Gardens Book (Sasquatch Books) |
You might also like:
"Garden Design Illustrated"
By John A. Grant and Carol L. Grant.
An old book now, but still in print and still well worth reading.
Note, however, that the Pacific Northwest offers growing conditions quite different from Omaha, so you must not take everything said by the Grants at face value. Bluntly put, a garden design that is highly appropriate for Seattle or Portland may be unsuitable in Omaha, particularly in the choice of plant material.
Still it's a good book and used copies are plentiful and cheap if you don't want to spring for new.
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Northwest Home Landscaping: Including Western British Columbia Book (Creative Homeowner) |
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Premier 51229 Garden Brilliance Flag, Pacific Northwest Lighthouse, 12 by 18-Inch Lawn & Patio (Premier Kites)
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Western Landscaping Book: Companion to the Best-Selling Western Garden Book Book (Oxmoor House) |
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Beauty by Design: Inspired Gardening in the Pacific Northwest eBooks (Touchwood Editions) |
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The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where...
Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant; April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885) was the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877) following his dominant role in the second half of the Civil War. Under Grant, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and...