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FrontRangeLiving.com -> Garden -> A Secret Garden
 THE
ENCHANTED GARDEN
By Heather Grimshaw
On a hot summer day, I took a walk through a garden, a matter of
steps from the sidewalk through a hand-gilded gate, and entered a cool realm of
green.
Scattered sunlight sparkled through tall trees as my eyes adjusted to green
hues. I was surrounded by the sound of softly falling water. Landscape designer,
April Simmons, gave me a personal tour of the private garden she had helped
create.
Over the last few years the garden has evolved through the efforts of several
local and national artists who create private spaces. Each piece of this
horticultural puzzle has been added deliberately, an investment of time and
creative energy, yet there is a magical sense about the place, an air of purity
to the garden as if no human hand had touched it.
 "When you have artists create a space, they create the things in
it," April says. For example, what used to be flat land outside a lower
level window is now a softly rounded rose garden that abuts a curvilinear
flagstone terrace. "We try to create places of privacy," she says.
"Each year the homeowner looks at the garden and says ‘okay, now what can
we do?’ That’s versus the people who come in and say, ‘I want this all
done at once.’ You really can’t do a garden at once because living things
change and change and change."
Adhering to the natural elements of weather and space are the ingredients to
gardening success. Shaded most of the day with the exception of a gathering of
roses that gets full sun in the afternoon, the garden has a rich mossy feel.
 Shade, created by established trees, "is one of the reasons why
everything has survived the drought so well," says April, who points to a
thriving yew. "We try to plant so that there’s some color in the winter.
Also, during spring, summer and fall you’ve got things coming up," such
as lilies that are marked with stakes, says April who plants in the spring, and
trims aggressive plants that would run amok if unchecked. Yet willowy branches
of fairy roses or feverfew daisies spill into pathways, daisies and peonies flop
in different directions, and ground covers creep into crevices, creating a sense
of abandon, the feeling that nature is stretching its limbs.
 The result is a graceful merging of hardscape with flowers and trees,
pathways dotted with woolly thyme. "We’ll plant thyme in one place and it
hops to the next…. It’s like, ‘ok, you like it better there. It cracks me
up,’" April says.
A fan of perennials like columbine, peonies, foxglove, delphinium, and
monkshood, April also has luck with exotic ginger in the garden. She says the
key to successful planting is finding the right environment, from sunlight to
soil mixture. Using organic additions like fish food, horse manure, and
inorganic discoveries like polymer, a spongy soil fertilizer, plants retain
water longer and find it easier to adjust to our semi-arid climate. Shade-loving
plants and trees--cranesbill geranium, blue cloak, a concolor fir, and heuchera
(coral bells)--provide beautiful landscaping tools and save gardeners the time
and trouble of experimentation.
 Commenting on rhododendrons, perhaps the most difficult shrub to tackle, that
"feel like growing", April acknowledges the finicky nature of plants
and describes her relationship with them as a dance. "So much of gardening
is playing. If you take it too seriously it won’t work."
With 15 years of landscape design experience under her belt, April enjoys the
process of grouping unlikely plants such as tropical lantana, coleus, and
strawberries along the borders. "We go for texture," she says. Putting
coleus next to a light leafy fern and then bringing in something solid like a
rhododendron is, as she says, similar to designing a dinner plate. "Variety
is important."
Hosta and astilbe lend height to shadier beds in front of a curved brick wall
that stands along the outer edges of the garden. "You can play with the
plants against the base" of the deep redbrick wall that curves and juts out
unexpectedly, says April. "It’s really fun."
 The wall, a patchwork of brick with a curvilinear design, is covered by
clematis that shakes its purple and pink flowers at passersby.
Honeysuckle, mock orange, and lilac scent the air. We wind our way back and
forth through the garden admiring the story-like nature of the bronze fence that
weaves its way around the space. Created by artisans who pieced it together on
site, the bronze artwork depicts butterflies dangling in mid-flight from its
horizontal surface with fairies, swans, and waterfalls. "It’s really
amazing," says April. "Everything was a labor of love."
A Year-Round Playground
 Scattered throughout waterfalls, along pathways, and on the edges of pools,
sculpture adds a whimsical feel to the garden as well as a sense of
anticipation. You never know when you’ll stumble across another small boy, a
fairy, or a small animal. There is no one focal point within the garden, which
spills into three layers of mossy green dotted with the vibrant colors of roots,
leaves, flowers, and berries.
"I try to hit all the senses so it’s visual as you look through and
then you have the different colors, the different textures, and then the
smell," says April pointing to a wild bunch of ‘Munstead’ lavender and
the speckles of cedar mulch spread over brown soil. "Otherwise you get
lulled to sleep by the green."
 Yet it’s easy to be lulled by this visual feast that reflects the work of
artists who are connected by a unique, creative network of friends and
colleagues. The collaboration is seamless to onlookers who see a graceful unity
of design in the arc of bridges, curve of mahogany railings, the pairing of
plants and flowers, and the flow of the waterfalls.
"The funny thing about water is it’ll go in any direction that’s the
easiest…. So you’ve gotta get in and do the Zen thing…get in with each
rock and know where it’s going," says April.
Those who have worked on the garden have created an insular world, a buffer
from the outside. A yellow sculpture of a goddess stands toward the back of the
garden, her arms stretched above her head. A turtle resides peacefully with coy
in a pond shaded by a mahogany pergola built without hardware.
 Toward the back of the garden coy swim year-round in two small ponds nestled
into the ground with floating water lilies. Swimming between ponds, the coy peek
at onlookers and are as hardy as they are beautiful, characteristics that mesh
well with this garden. Wander toward the lap pool, mere feet away from the coy
pond, and come across a small, hobbit-like home with slanted roof that serves as
a pool house. Readers of the Tolkien trilogy instantly will imagine a fictional
Bilbo Baggins snugly inside serving one of his lavish teas. It is a garden where
such fantasies flourish easily, a fairyland enhanced by twinkling lights at
night, with the sprinkling of ground covers like sweet woodruff that produce
delicate white flowers and add a soft, cushiony look to the ground.
 An old cistern is nestled into a small vegetable garden with blazer and Don
Juan roses as well as Virginia creeper climbing along its sides. "The owner
really kept the age of the place and tried to mesh things with the house,"
says April. "To me the whole place is a fairyland. That’s what I love
about it."
Walking the small pathways, admiring the artistic stepping-stones and
heart-shaped leaves of small border plants, and inhaling the softly scented air,
the garden feels immense, although it’s less than an acre on a suburban lot.
As we weave our way back up to the front of the garden, April notices places
where the concentration of green could be broken up with color, she sees weeds
that must be pulled, plants that can be pruned. And as she makes her mental
to-do list, she smiles. "I get to play—in the dirt," she says, in a
magnificent playground.
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Sources:
April Simmons and business partner Sash, Grassroots Landscape, 2686 4th St.,
Boulder, 80304; 303-588-1931.
Jarad Astin, Modern Vintage Aesthetics, P.O. Box 176, Nederland, 80466;
303-819-4360; e-mail: jarad279@earthlink.net.
Ponds and water features.
Tim Dingler, T.M.D. Woodwork, Inc., 2525 Arapahoe Ave. Suite E-4, P.O. Box
126, Boulder, 80302; 303-828-9002; specializes in curved designs.
Patrick McMahon, New Horizons/McMahon Masonry, 3333 Fourmile Canyon, Boulder,
80302, 303-413-8061.
Michelle Guyton, Simply Shopping, 8139 Dry Creek Circle, Niwot, 80503;
303-652-1195; her business finds resources for homeowners.
Jim Hanifan and Joe Sysel, Shadows Ranch, Box 542, Georgetown, 80444;
303-569-2026; built the fence with storybook scenes.
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