The home and garden of Helen Jones at 264 Grant Street has been selected as October’s Garden of the Month. Her garden is available for your street-side viewing pleasure.

Helen purchased this property in 2005 and she says it’s still a work in progress. Helen occasionally consulted Alan Miller and Aaron Blasen of Renaissance Landscaping, but it was her idea to have a natural meadow to bring back memories of the meadows she loved at Mt. Lassen.

When Helen bought her house the magnificent rock walls already existed, but she added many of the trees & shrubs which are now showing wonderful fall colors. The plantings around the front of her home includes: dogwoods, white birch, mugo pines, Japanese maples, eastern redbuds, lilacs, and a lovely weeping cedar.   Recently she scattered Asian poppy seeds around her flowerbeds, and Helen stated, “in the spring her purple wisteria is gorgeous.”.

Helen’s large circular drive creates a mounded area where she planted a ginkgo, a madrone, and a slender rather than broad magnolia. Interspersed among the trees are two  manzanita; one native and a cultivar with dark green leaves that loves the granite soil. The under-story plants include a variety of perennials such as Shasta daises, asters, lavenders, dianthus, rudbeckia, coreopsis and many types of ornamental grasses. The evergreen kinnikinnic spilling over the rock walls adds the finishing touches.

Helen has garden help once or twice a month to help keep the garden manageable, but in a natural state. She also has  a drip watering system to keep it all green.

The effect of all her planning is just what she was hoping for, a mountain meadow that we all can enjoy!

Karen O’Rourke
October 2012