Featured garden
Discover the garden of Lisa Albert, one of the stops on the Lake Oswego area Gardens of Natural Delights tour. Gather ideas and inspiration for your own yard.
Lisa Albert’s passion for natural gardening is matched only by the beauty of her home garden. After falling in love with the adventures of growing plants, she enrolled in the OSU Extension Service Master Gardener program in 1996. That’s when everything changed. While her young children played in the yard, she was learning frightening facts about insecticides – that was all it took to inspire her to never use them again. She is pleased to report that her garden more than survived the change; it’s healthier than others that rely on chemicals and lower-maintenance too.
Less labor, more joy
Lisa goes for plants that are neither fussy nor ill-behaved. That way she has fewer chores and less worry they’ll take over the garden. Pests and diseases do less damage to her many native plants. Climate-specific non-natives are planted in places that provide the specific sun, soil, water and space they each need. All this means more time to enjoy the garden and revel in its beauty.
Breathtaking
Foliage, bark, berries, stone and water blend with blossoms for beauty in all seasons. A masterful attention to color combination, shape and pattern make each bed sing. And sing they do daily as any of the more than 30 species of birds Lisa’s identified stop by for a drink, bite or bath. The hand-stacked basalt stone walls and edging add habitat value and a kind of deep backbone to the yard (not to mention a temporary deep soreness in Lisa’s and her husband’s backs).
Wildlife habitat
Birds, frogs and butterflies all find this garden quite inviting. Last year a brightly-feathered Western tanager visited. Recently the little pond was aflutter with purple finches, goldfinches and chickadees. And a rufous-sided towhee digs for dinner in the leaves daily. Wildlife come and put on quite a show thanks to all the native plants, the lack of pesticides, water from the pond and an array of plant heights for habitat.
[Lisa Albert's garden was featured on the Lake Oswego garden tour in July 2009.]