Couple gets rid of lawn, makes garden oasis

MINNEAPOLIS - When Alice Menge started gardening, it was all about islands. With a nudge from her husband, Dick Sherwood, she's gone continental.

"At first, I had cut out some islands," Menge said of their St. Paul yard, "but he hated cutting around those because it meant trimming by hand. So I just started filling in."

After three decades of filling in, their yard - front, back and boulevard - is all garden.

With an eye for design honed by taking classes, visiting other gardens and learning from her own mistakes, Menge has crafted a natural, lived-in showcase with a harmonious array of textures, shapes and colors.

Viewed from the screen house in a corner of the yard, the landscape seems to levitate its way up to the two-story house. The front, anchored by a ginormous, rough-hewn maple, enchants. And that's before you follow one of the tidy stone paths to a fairy garden on the east side of the green-trimmed stucco house.

So, after covering every square inch of the property with gardens, is she done?

"Hmmm, probably never," said Menge, 63.

Spoken like a true gardener. Even when the destination is reached, the journey doesn't end.

And this journey involved collecting rocks from far-flung locations, fits and starts with waterworks and plants and a storm that cost them a third of the 80-year-old maple, as well as some unusual evolutions.

For starters, Menge worked "backwards," not tackling the front until the back was finished. The back yard itself has mutated mightily, from flowers to perennials to the current shrub-and-tree-dominated landscape.

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Couple gets rid of lawn, makes garden oasis