My Garden Is a Sanctuary, Not a Backyard

 

I’m often mistaken for a “backyard gardener,” but nothing about my gardens is casual. Over twenty‑seven years, I’ve built a planned, layered, and expansive quarter‑acre landscape filled with irises, daylilies, daffodils, herbs, wildflowers, hostas, ferns, and the wildlife that depends on this space. Every bed, path, and planting has intention behind it. This is not a hobby garden it’s a living sanctuary I’ve shaped with the same care and knowledge I once used as an estate gardener for a Master Gardener and Master Naturalist.

This garden sits just down the steps from the sandstone patio my husband and I designed and installed one spring. It’s one of three patios and part of a four‑layer garden system that unfolds across the property each level connected by steps originally built by the first gardener who lived here. Every space has its own rhythm, its own story, and its own season of bloom.

This is the sandstone patio my husband and I designed and installed .

One of the lower‑level gardens, filled with coneflowers, daylilies, fragrant herbs and  pollinator plants, and wildlife habitat. This space sits just beyond the sandstone patio and shows the intentional layering that defines my garden  not a backyard, but a designed sanctuary.

Emily, age nine, learning in my garden during a difficult summer. 

My garden is also where I teach. One summer, nine‑year‑old Emily spent her afternoons with me while her parents were going through a divorce. Here, she learned how to plant irises, divide rhizomes, and care for living things. We made mud cakes decorated with petals, painted stepping stones for the garden paths, and found comfort in the simple rhythm of working with our hands. The garden held her that summer  and it held me too.

Over the years, I’ve become a quiet wildlife expert simply by living closely with the creatures who share this land. I’ve rescued chipmunks, baby squirrels, and even provided a safe haven for feral cats. A doe returns each spring to have her fawn in the wildflower garden, trusting this space as if it were her own. Hawks, hummingbirds, groundhogs, raccoons, and songbirds move through the layers of the garden daily, each finding something they need here.

This is not a backyard.
It is a sanctuary for plants, for wildlife, for children who need comfort, and for me.