A garden like this doesn’t happen overnight.
Laurie and Roger Moser’s corner lot has seen 19 springs and summers, seasons of drought and plenty of rain, children playing and growing up, and lots of love and attention from its owners—all those things that make a garden more than just a collection of plants. It’s the kind of cottage garden that many aspire to but few achieve, with a genuine charm that results from that one elusive quality: it’s a reflection of the life, tastes and talent of the people who tend it.
When the Mosers bought the 1930s traditional nearly two decades ago, the small yard around it was “a blank slate,” Laurie says. Although she had no formal horticultural training, she had learned a love of gardening from her father, and started out slowly planting beds of perennials first, then adding textured evergreens and shrubbery with interesting branch formations. Laurie says she’s instinctive about what she plants. “If I find something I like, I’ll bring it home and find a place for it. It’s trial and error. I don’t have a problem with digging something up and moving it if it doesn’t look right.” Her natural talent for color, texture and design would make any gardener green with envy—she seems to hit on just the right combinations for each part of the garden, creating a look that’s natural and informal but unified. A crimson barberry near a thick dwarf Alberta spruce or a golden yew share the space gracefully.
Charming features—the arbor dripping with roses that match the color of the door, the tree house, now in disuse and inaccessible—add to the sense that this garden organically grew with the family. They’ve incorporated parts of family history into the garden, too: the meandering pathway is made of bricks from a dismantled school in Laurie’s hometown, the tin on the tree house is from her parent’s old roof. It’s little touches like these that keep the Mosers rooted in their garden, and each season the roots grow deeper.