Bellingham garden explodes in a riot of flowers and colors

ZOE FRALEY

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Sheryl Lindquist has a simple but beautiful garden philosophy: the more color, the better.

Her philosophy is evident to anyone who passes the spectrum of vivid blooms in her Bellingham frontyard. Hanging baskets frame the garage and drip heavily with magenta flowers, and stretching hollyhocks dwarf her small fence.

And that's just the front yard. The back is where Lindquist really lets her floral imagination wander.

| DANNY GAWLOWSKI | THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

"It's my own little bit of paradise," says Lindquist, 45. "It's nice just to be out here and away."

Her well-kept backyard is a wandering garden adventure, with everything one would imagine a dream garden should have. There's a lush grape arbor with a bench swing, a greenhouse, a shed, a cutting garden and areas for seating sprinkled around the yard. There's even a catnip patch and a tree perch for her Siamese cat, Gypsy, which showed up in the garden eight years ago and hasn't left since.

Then there are the plants themselves, exploding brightly out of every bed. There are plumes of rich gladiolas, tufts of dahlias, patches of lavender and unfurling roses. They're the star of the show.

" 'Earth laughs in flowers.' That's from Ralph Waldo Emerson," she says. "That's kind of how I look at it."

Her favorites are the stargazer lilies, sweet peas and angel trumpet. Their scents bring a smile to her face.

"At night a lot of the flowers have scents that come out, so I can smell them while I'm in the hot tub," she says.

For Lindquist, who does project management at the BP Cherry Point Refinery, gardening gives her off hours a pleasant pace.

"I have a busy, hectic job," she says. "(Gardening) is my stress reliever."

She estimates that in addition to the 50 or so hours she works a week, she probably spends another 40 hours in her garden.

"It's a lot of work," she says. "But it's a lot of love."

Lindquist started the garden from scratch when she moved into her home in 1990. Then the yard was a sad affair, all grass with a few juniper bushes and some unsightly cottonwood stumps.

"I just didn't want the traditional rhodies and evergreens," she says. "Having color is so much happier."

She ripped out the stumps and, slowly but surely, began building her beds.

"It's been a project," she says. "Every year I add one bed."

But after adding something new every year, Lindquist is just about out of room. She recently put in small curbs around her beds so she wouldn't be able to expand them anymore.

"It started just one bit at a time and then it got bigger and bigger," she says. "I'm out of yard to do anything in. We maximized it all."