Hillside garden a labor of love

STODDARD, Wis. -- If you're lucky enough to get an invitation to Kathy Raabel's garden just south of Stoddard, you will be treated to waves of colorful blooms that flow gently across the hill that stretches across her backyard. Drifts of pink phlox and coneflower, dark pink monarda, yellow daylilies and white daisies paint a perennial picture that keeps on blooming from spring to summer to fall.

But when Kathy and her husband, Gary, moved to the property seven years ago, there was nothing but scrub brush and trees on the hillside.

It has been seven years of hard labor, but Kathy says the garden is getting close to her vision of what it could be.

Gary says the vision is complete and has even staked off what he has decided will be the end of the garden.

"I put that wall in to make a statement," he said, pointing to the south end of the hillside garden. "That garden isn't going any farther."

He has said things like that before, but Kathy thinks he means it this time.

Even Kathy is willing to concede that she is running out of plants and energy. The half acre she and Gary garden on takes a lot of time and attention, but there's nothing she likes better, Kathy said, than to sit on their deck in the evenings and look at what they've created. Of course, she also focuses on the bare spots, on what needs weeding, and on which plants aren't getting enough water. And pretty soon she's up on her feet and back at work.

"Every year it gets nicer," Kathy said.

Part of that is due to Gary's path- building skills. He has used wood, railroad ties, pavers, crushed rock, bark and other materials to give Kathy some safe ways up and down their steep hill. And they've strategically spread hoses throughout the hillside and have left them in place so they aren't constantly dragging hoses around the garden.

They've got a water barrel at the top of the garden that they fill with one of the hoses at the top of the hillside. And they built a road behind the garage that leads up to the hillside so Gary can attach a cart to the riding lawnmower to drag boulders, bark and gravel up where it's needed.

"We just unloaded the third truckload of wood chips. Each truckload is 36 yards of wood chips and it costs us $400 a load," Kathy said.

Nobody said it was cheap to garden on a hillside.

But for Gary and Kathy, their soil erosion efforts have been worth the time, energy and money they've put into it. The combination of wood chips, perennials, tree stumps and bushes is holding the hill up quite nicely.

"With that bark, that bank doesn't wash out at all," Gary said.

While Gary is ready to stop planting all together, Kathy just can't stop. To fill in with all the perennials are annuals such as impatiens, moss roses, marigolds and petunias. Kathy, who works in real estate and gets to every corner of the Coulee Region through her job, manages to stop at just about every garden nursery in the area by summer's end.

"I never can pass up a garden shop anywhere," she said. Gary "thinks it's just ridiculous the way I buy plants."

But finally, after seven years, she says she will be able to split the daylilies and the irises and spread them around. She will be able to fill in empty spaces and keep working on the color palette. There are spots where blue catmint flows into the exact same shade of blue veronica. Gold daylilies sit happily next to black-eyed Susan. And pink phlox are highlighted by darker pink monarda.

Kathy says she'll probably always be tweaking the garden, but hopes it will be less work.

Right now, they're concentrating on what plants work best on the hillside and they seem to have the combination just right. The plants stand up straight and tall when they are supposed to and cascade gracefully where it's appropriate.

"Gary hates plants that flop over," Kathy said, which may be why their monarda is standing up straight and tall while lots of other people's monarda are flopping over in the heat.

Down near the driveway, at the approach to the house, a rock garden is flourishing thanks to Gary and Kathy's combined efforts. Gary chipped out pieces of rock and Kathy planted the soil pockets he created. Now, after seven years, it looks as if it was always planted.

"We've thought about moving," Kathy said, but she can't imagine leaving the garden they've created.

They actually tried moving, getting partly moved into a house in Stoddard before they both decided they couldn't leave the garden.