English-inspired garden in St. Paul

Kathy Fryxell Dirks loves everything English -- china patterns, London theater, charming villages, and especially the English country estate gardens she's visited on her many trips to England.

"Gardening seems to be England's national art," said the St. Paul gardener. "Just about everyone has one, or if they have no space, they have fantastic window boxes and hanging plants."

When Dirks moved to her St. Paul home in 1987, she wanted her own English garden. And she wasn't going to let a city-size yard with an intimidating hill stop her.

Over the next two decades, Dirks designed, built and nurtured multi-level garden rooms, which create a densely planted, well-composed tapestry of perennials, climbing vines, roses and annuals. The three-tiered layout is as lovely as it is enchanting: Its stone stairs beckon a visitor up to the next level to see what lies beyond.

On the first level is a private patio garden, canopied by a mature mugo pine. The intimate space is where the family entertains and retreats to listen to the trickling water of a brass fountain.

Up the stone steps is the second level, the home of Dirks' fragrant bee and butterfly garden, which is filled with masses of monarda, David Austin roses and Russian sage.

The third level, which is hidden from view, is the crème-de-la-crème. It features a picturesque, albeit small, English style border garden, which features rows of flowers on either side of a wide swath of grass. At one end, matching urns spill over with trailing annuals, at the other end a teak bench offers a place to take in the royal view.

"My gardens are like a type of English garden which has a formal layout with a carefully planned combination of plants," Dirks said. "But there's also a sense of exuberance."

Dirks, a self-employed recruiter, said she learned how to bring an English sensibility to her Midwestern garden by studying the techniques of two influential British gardeners: the pioneering Gertrude Jekyll, who designed more than 400 gardens in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and Rosemary Verey, a celebrated gardener for the rich and famous, whose many books include practical gardening advice for everything from window boxes to vast English gardens.

She was tantalized by the photos of the two renowned gardeners' designs, and Dirks adapted their ideas to her back yard and climate.

"They designed beautiful garden rooms on three-acre estates in England," she said. "I did it on my city lot with Zone 4 plants."

And it wasn't all tea and crumpets. When the family bought the charming 1927 English Tudor-style home a block from the Mississippi River, it had a few old world features, such as a flagstone patio and rock wall. But Dirks had to contend with the 40-foot-wide sloping hill.

"As I was looking it over, it hit me," Dirks said. " 'I'll put in another wall and make the back yard three levels.' "

But first the hill had to be removed. It wasn't possible to get a Bobcat back there, so Dirks gathered family and friends, who carried buckets of sandy soil out and carried in rich black dirt. Her father, who was a stone mason, built the new wall and steps, matching the existing wall as closely as possible.

Over the years, Dirks has toiled in the three garden rooms planting sedum, daylilies, Oriental lilies, catmint and hardy geraniums. Her favorites -- roses and clematis -- twine up walls and trellises. She said she also blended in select ornamental grasses, typically not used in English gardens, because they add elegance.

For summer-long splashes of color throughout the garden, Dirks packs grand urns, patio pots, and borders with annuals such as lobelia, ageratum, impatiens and nicotiana. She grows many from seed in her attic in the winter.

Although the Golden Valley native inherited the gardening gene from her grandparents and father, it took years of honing the beds to attain what she felt was the right balance of height, color and texture.

One of her first gardens was mass plantings of Asiatic lilies, irises and daylilies. "All I was thinking about was the flowers and not the foliage," she said. "They all had spiky leaves and were wrong together."

There still are spiky daylilies in her garden, but now they're arching over spotted pulmonaria, and tidy boxwood shrubs mingle with allium.

Passing on a passion

"I fuss over the details," said the admitted perfectionist. "I'm sure I got it from my meticulous father."

Fussing over the details is only one of the chores in what Dirks calls her "high-maintenance gardens." She spends many hours each week weeding, deadheading, transplanting and hauling mulch and hoses up and down steps. Her husband, Arnie, lends needed muscle for building stairs and mowing the three levels. But the garden has always been Dirks' responsibility -- and her obsession. She doesn't force her two children, Laura and Devon, to help with garden tasks.

"But I hope they'll want a garden of their own someday," she said.

Dirks will likely get her wish. Her teenage daughter, Laura Quist, already plants an annual pot each spring and cooks with herbs from the garden. But Dirks never realized how much the gardens meant to her daughter until she discovered Quist had nominated her for the Beautiful Gardens contest.

In her letter to Home+Garden, Quist wrote about her mother's special talent for creating a one-of-a-kind English style garden. Quist said that by observing her mother's dedication, she has learned patience, commitment, and a sense of nurture.

"I get a deeper appreciation for the gardens when I see mom's passion and how happy she is when she's working in the garden," Quist said.

Like her guiding spirits, Jekyll and Verey, Dirks is passing on her love of gardening -- with an English flair -- to the next generation.

Lynn Underwood • 612-673-7619 • lunderwood@startribune.com