Photographs by Adam Albright
Garden room
Writer Rhonda Fleming Hayes tucked a garden room in the breezeway between her house and the garage. It’s filled with collected treasures, including the soapstone sink that she discovered in the basement of the property’s original home. Open shelves made of hickory offer plenty of handy storage.
Walk up the driveway through my garden and you’ll see monarch butterflies patrolling the milkweed; you’ll hear the hum of bumblebees nose-deep in the wild roses—after all, some people call me “the pollinator lady.” That’s the live-and-let-live part of the garden, where other than an occasional weeding, I try to let nature do her thing.
More likely, you’ll find me in the kitchen garden. It’s where I plan and plot and tend. It’s the beating heart of my garden that feeds my family and my soul. When visitors follow me along the crunchy gravel path, almost always they tell me how fortunate I am the plants get so much sun.
But luck has nothing to do with it. We pushed the house over to one side when building it so that I’d have plenty of room on the south side for raised beds. After living the corporate nomad life for so long and having to adopt and adapt to other peoples’ gardens, this was my chance to get it right. Sunlight, soil, water.
When we lived in England for a while, I was inspired by the walled gardens where growing food was just as much art form as agriculture. It goes back farther, though, to my childhood, to those Peter Rabbit tales. Sure, the bunnies were cute, yet I was more enamored with the vegetables in Mr. McGregor’s fields, the tidy rows of ruffled lettuce, the quaint tools, the terra-cotta pots.
Bountiful and beautiful, that’s my goal every season. I aim to use every square inch of gardening real estate. Vertical growing keeps a small footprint, so tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, even mini melons and squash climb high. Tight spacing means my soil has to be supercharged—manure, compost, and organic granular fertilizer. It crumbles like chocolate cake, and I never step on it.
The fun part is designing, finding combinations that highlight the beauty of humble vegetables paired with flowers and herbs. Color, texture, shape. Gunmetal-gray broccoli beside the saturated red of “Moulin Rouge” zinnias. Spiky blue-green onions next to puckered dinosaur kale and burnt-orange marigolds. Feathery dill and fat cabbages. Everything is a visual feast way before it arrives on the plate.
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back of house
A stone wall borders the patio facing a fountain and the garden room, which is situated in a breezeway beyond. Blooming flowers and herbs soften the stone and gravel that serves as ground cover. Hayes’s kitchen garden begins where the patio steps down and continues along the southern side of her Linden Hills home. The garden room’s double doors swing open to an outdoor fountain and a patio dining table beyond. “I like to group pots of sun-loving herbs like lavender, oregano, and thyme by the stone seat wall—it gives a Mediterranean vibe to the garden,” Hayes says.
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Garden next to house
Corten steel beds border the side garden. “In a relatively small area, I grow enough fresh produce for my husband and I, plus some for the neighbors,” Hayes says. “Any surplus, I put in a ‘free’ box on the front steps for passersby.”
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Seed packets and dibble
Hayes surrounds herself with well-loved gardenalia, including seed packets and her favorite dibble.
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The huge boulder out front was rescued from a neighbor’s landscape.
The huge boulder out front was rescued from a neighbor’s landscape.
Architect: Rehkamp Larson Architects, 2732 W. 43rd St., Mpls., 612-285-7275, rehkamplarson.com // Builder: BCD Homes, 4457 White Bear Pkwy., Ste. C, White Bear Lake, 651-274-1894, bcdhomes.com // Landscape design: Phillips Garden, 2646 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls., 612-721-1221, phillipsgarden.com
