Inspired garden part of Wexford Garden and Pond Tour

Dawn Andersson, 78, considers herself a new gardener with “only” 16 years spent with her hands in the dirt.

It began when she moved into the Marshall home she shares with her husband, Craig. Over the years, she’s relied on the help of three different landscapers, but it’s obvious when walking through the garden it reflects Andersson’s personality.

The garden, which is one of eight on the July 15 Wexford Garden and Pond Tour, is hers through the plant choices, but also in the form of the angels, frogs, gnomes, elves and other artistic garden ornaments she loves.

“I don’t know what it is about frogs,” she says smiling. “My first little figure was a frog and I’ve gone from there to just loving frogs. It’s cute to go around a corner and suddenly see something that you’re not expecting.”

There’s also a distressed antique children’s wagon that’s home to a container she purposely painted to look rusty.

“It may be because I’m getting antique that I’m treasuring antiques more,” she says, laughing.

The house and garden are both filled with treasures from another era.

“I’ve always loved old things,” she says. “As you get older you appreciate all that was done to get where you are today.”

Her garden journey began slowly after moving here almost two decades ago. Starting from scratch, she read everything she could and learned as much as she could from the landscapers and others.

“I got caught up in it,” she says, “and thought this is just a lot of fun. There’s just such joy going out and seeing something pop open; it’s very good for the soul.”

She works in the garden daily, recently raking mulch around the sloping beds between meandering flagstone paths as she prepares for the upcoming tour.

There are very few flat areas, which constitutes her biggest challenge.

“You could trip and start heading down hill and you might not be able to stop,” Andersson warns. “Anytime you are working in the garden one foot is down further from the other, there are lots of complaints from my body. It’s rewarded in the long term.”

She wears colorful Sloggers garden shoes, which help to keep her footing.

“They have treads, you don’t slip, that’s easy to do in a garden on a slope,” she says. “You feel far more secure and they are very comfortable, plus they are cute, they look like they belong in a garden.”

The garden includes a couple of water features, the first is at the entryway of the house.

“There’s nothing that sounds nicer than water in the garden, unless it’s a leak,” she says laughing.

The area is decorated with her beloved frogs who seemingly love their time in the shadow of the flowing waterfall.

On the deck is an amazing, one-of-a-kind bronze sculpture of her husband with four of the couple’s grandchildren. The idea for the artwork came after her husband retired. The couple travelled and they would see sculptures in the towns they would visit.

“We always used to think, isn’t that the neatest thing,” she says. “Wouldn’t that be fun to have some day?”

They found a sculptor at a WaterFowl Festival they traveled to annually in Maryland. The artist came to take detailed photographs and then went to work, starting in clay.

“He emailed me a picture of my husband’s head sitting on a block of wood, it was the most terrifying thing to look at,” she recalls, “but I approved it.”

The garden is filled with pretty groundcovers, perennial and annual flowers and many interesting trees and shrubs. Oak leaf hydrangeas, smoke bush, mimosa trees, aralia tree and much more fill the landscape. There’s a long bed of bright yellow daylilies growing in between hostas that overlook a forest of trees and the second water feature.

She uses lots of Liquid Fence weekly to keep the plants safe from the deer that roam the neighborhood. They are so voracious that they actually tried to eat the artificial eggs from a birds nest in one of her displays. “They will try anything,” she says.

Even though she loves her time in the garden, the end of the season offers a well needed respite.

By February, she’s itching to garden again. “I feel like when the winter is on, I can almost hear my garden whisper, ‘I’ll be back,’ and I know it will, that’s the real joy in it.”

Many gardeners are thrilled to be part of a garden tour, but usually only once after they work furiously to make the space perfect. Andersson though has been part of the pond tour for the last six or seven years and uses it as an inspiration to make her garden special.

“It’s the incentive to get everything ready,” she says. “It would be real easy to say, ‘Nuts, I’m not going to do it anymore.’ ” Andersson gets true enjoyment out the visitors who come annually. “Anything that you treasure, it’s always better when you share it,” she says.

The Wexford Garden and Pond Tour is a self guided tour on July 15th from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. Tickets are $35.00 per person and a percentage of the proceeds will support Inspired Women Paying it Forward, a philanthropic networking organization that supports women’s non-profits locally and globally. For more information go to wexfordpondtour.com or 724-935-6100.

Doug Oster is the 535mediarack home and garden editor. Reach him at 412-965-3278 or doster@tribweb.com or via Twitter at @dougoster1.

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