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FrontRangeLiving.com -> Garden -> Home as Refuge
 WHEN
HOME IS A REFUGE: Gardening Without Toxic Chemicals
By Niki Hayden
Designing a home as a refuge is trendy now. As a private retreat from the
hustle and bustle of the workaday world, whether a mountain condo or meditation
garden, a private corner is a chance to defuse from daily stress. For a few, it takes on a greater
significance—a path to renewed health. For Gunda Starkey, a mountain home became an
opportunity to escape chemicals that could worsen a toxic-induced illness of 15 years ago.
Gunda was caught in a blizzard of herbicide spray blown from a neighbor’s
yard. At first, she thought the symptoms of numbness, pain, scrambled vision and
tingling would go away within a few days. But as headaches and pain persisted
month after month, it became clear that the chemicals, which are present in the
famous herbicide Agent Orange, had sickened her and made her sensitive to other
chemicals, as well. "I managed to improve my health," she says, "And
I
was able to channel my energy into activism helping people understand what they
might be exposed to." Joining support groups for those with similar
sensitivities and speaking out about alternatives to toxic chemicals gave shape
and meaning to her suffering.
 Doctors suggested to Gunda that she look for an environment that would be
less stressful to her dampened immune system. That search took her to the
Colorado mountains, where pesticides and herbicides spread on suburban lawns would be replaced by natural gardens. Gunda also hoped to find an old house that
would predate particleboard and newer materials that contain formaldehyde. She
found it one day when she visited the cabin of a friend. The 1930s era Swedish-style cabin provided every amenity Gunda
needed.
"As soon as I walked into this house, I told my friend that if she ever
wanted to sell her home—I would buy it," Gunda says, which is what she
did. Although Gunda has designed a life as free from toxic chemicals as possible
in our modern world, she hasn’t given up on gardening. A passion to surround
her home with a garden rich in colors and textures, but free from pesticides and
herbicides, led her to explore organic gardens for the mountains. In the process
she made new friends, discovered tough but beautiful mountain plants, and
designed a life for herself that renewed body and soul.
 "Gardening is my Zen time," she says, "a time to lower stress.
And I always wanted a grandma’s garden--one with a cottage feel. A clump with
three plants, but not a wide swath that wouldn’t have a cottage look to
it," she says. Like so much of garden design, Gunda’s beginning
attempts were humble: drainpipes froze in the winter. So, to insulate the
exposed pipes, a berm of soil became her first garden.
Original plants were natives suited to the high altitude and arid climate.
Since she is dependent on a well for her home, most plants have to depend upon
rainfall. She has a respect for mountain dwellers who only garden with natives,
but Gunda longed for the lush plantings of splashy blooms like iris and
delphiniums. She also didn’t want to introduce invasive plants to her
neighborhood. That, she says, only encourages the further use of herbicides to
get rid of plants that become weeds.
 Blue flax, a native, took hold. Then she added lupines, sedums, Iceland
poppies, knautia, mountain bluet and snow-in-summer. To those tough specimens,
she began to experiment with more fragile plants. Indian blanket flowers, sturdy
plants in lower elevations, are only spindly at her altitude. They never seemed to thrive, she
says, but with their brilliant red, orange and yellow markings, Gunda grows them
as annuals.
A variety of poppies, columbines and delphiniums have become workhorses for the
garden. They’re backed up with sweet Williams, lady’s mantle, pink soapwort,
snow daisy and bee balm. Each year, new additions have provided the waves of
color and texture to create an old-fashioned cottage garden mountain style.
 She scours antique shops to find farm or ski equipment from years ago. An old
iron wheel, perhaps the first wheel of an old-fashioned bicycle, lines up
alongside the cabin. Found sculpture is great for covering up plants that are
late to come up, she says, and add to the 19th century feel of the
cabin.
Gunda’s husband, John Ooyen, has assembled gardens from the discarded rocks
unearthed when they added a garage. He marvels that one man built the cabin in a year during the Great Depression, while his garage, with a crew of
workers, took nearly as long.
Several years ago, he met the man who built the
cabin. "A 92-year-old man who was a Swedish immigrant built the house when he
was 23," John says. The cabin looks Scandinavian, with a high ceiling in
the living room, a small kitchen and dining space, one bathroom, a couple of
bedrooms and a small study. A doctor and his family were to spend summers in the
cabin. The builder’s pay was only room and board.
 Gunda has added an old European look with scalloped white cotton curtains, red and white
tapestries, embroidered textiles and heavy white pottery. The cabin has been
changed very little, so the original simplicity remains. Red painted shutters
were designed to keep out the cold. Bare wood floors and log walls were stripped
with an ax. The original builder was given logs from federal forestland after a
wildfire. The garden, Gunda says, should reflect the same informality, an
old-fashioned collection of flowering plants with an alpine sturdiness.
 On any July day, the flowers reflect a showier version of what grows in the
mountains. Pastel columbines bob on dainty stems. The Rocky Mountain blue
columbine dots the riverbanks not far away. Blue delphiniums are the robust
cousins of mountain larkspur and sedums echo the wild yellow sedums called
stonecrop. All of Gunda’s plants have proved hardy at 8,800 feet without
pesticides or strong chemicals of any kind. It’s proof, she says, that gardens
can flourish not only at high altitude, but without toxic chemicals that would
sicken people, pets, wildlife and insects. What’s best for people, she
believes, is best for gardens, too.
Gunda Starkey's Plant List:
- Achillea, yarrow, "Paprika"
- Adenophora latifolia,
ladybells
- Alchemilla vulgaris, lady's mantle
- Antennaria dioica,
pussytoes
- Aquilegia, columbine, "McKana hybrids"
- Armeria maritima, sea pink, "Compacta" and "Launcheana"
- Artemisia, "Silver Mound"
- Artemesia stelleriana, "Silver Brocade"
- Aster alpinus, alpine aster, "Blue"
- Aster novi-belgi, hardy aster
- Aster x Frikartii, Frikart's aster, "Monch"
- Astilbe chinensis purpurkerze, astilbe, "Purple Candles"
- Bolax glebaria nana, plastic plant
- Campanula carpatica, Carpathian harebell, "Blue Chips"
- Campanula persicifolia, peach-leaved bellflower
- Centaurea Montana, mountain bluet
- Cerastium tomentosum, snow in summer
- Coreopsis auriculata, tickseed, "Nana"
- Delosperma nubigenum, hardy yellow ice plant
- Delphinium x elatum, pacific giant hybrid,
"Magic Fountains"
- Dendranthema Zawadskii, Korean chrysanthemum
- Dianthus
Barbatus, sweet William, "Indian Carpet"
- Dianthus deltoides, pinks, "Flashing Light"
- Dianthus Plumarius, pinks,
"Spring Beauty"
- Dianthus Gatianopolitanus, pinks, "Spotti"
- Dicentra
Eximia, bleeding heart, dwarf
- Echinacea purpurea, purple coneflower
- Fragaria, ornamental strawberry, "Lipstick"
- Gaillardia grandiflora, blanketflower, "Goblin"
- Geranium sanguineum, cranesbill,
"Alpenglow" and "Johnson's Blue"
- Heuchera micantha,
coral bells, "Palace Purple"
- Knautia Macedonica, knautia
- Lobelia speciosa,
"Fan Deep Rose"
- Lamium galeobdolon, variegated dead nettle,
"Herman's Pride"
- Lamium, "White Nancy"
- Lavandula
angustifolia, lavender, "Hidcote" and "Munstead"
- Leontopodium
alpinum, edelweis
- Leucanthemum sumperbum, Shasta Daisy, "Silver Princes
and "Snow Daisy"
- Lewisia, rockrose
- Linium perenne, blue flax
- Lychnis coronaria, rose campion,
"Mullein Pink"
- Monarda didyma, bee balm, "Marshal's
Delight" and "Petite Delight"
- Oenothera macrocarpa, Missouri
evening primrose
- Papaver alpinum, alpine poppy
- Papaver nudicaule, Iceland poppy, "Champagne Bubbles"
- Papaver orientalis, oriental poppy,
"Brilliant" and "Beauty of Livermore"
- Physostegia virginiana, obedient plant, "Pine Bouquet"
- Pulmonaria, lungwort,
"Raspberry Splash"
- Phlox maculata, garden phlox
- Stachys byzantina, lamb's ear
- Salvia officinalis, variegated sage, "Tricolor"
- Rudbeckia
fulgida, black-eyed Susan "Goldstrum"
- Salvia nemorosa, meadow sage
- Saponaria ocymoides, pink soapwort
- Saxifrage, "Purple Robe"
- Scabiosa
columbarial, pincushion flower, "Butterfly Blue"
- Sedum, "Frosty
Morn" and "Old Man's Bones"
- Sedum platycladas
- Sedum reflexum
- Sedum
spurium, "Tricolor" and "Bronze Carpet" and "Dragon's
Blood"
- Sedum telephium, "Autumn Joy"
- Sempervivum, hens & chicks, "Hardy Species Mix"
- Tanacetum coccineum, painted daisy
- Tanacetum
densum ssp. amani, partridge feather
- Tanacetum niveum, snow daisy
- Trollius
chinensis, globeflower, "Golden Queen"
- Veronica liwanensis, Turkish
Veronica
- Veronica longfolia, speedwell, "Sunny Border Blue" and
"Blue Charm"
- Veronica spicata, spikes speedwell, "Red Fox"
Helpful phone numbers:
Gardener's Supply catalog at 800-427-3363 and Gardens Alive catalog at
812-537-8650 offer beneficial insects, organic fertilizer. Coloradans for
Alternatives to Toxics, 303-258-3133 or Biointegral Research Center,
510-524-8404 provide information on alternatives to the use of insecticides and
herbicides.
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