When Cora Reuter was a little girl, her school bus passed a blooming flower garden every afternoon. “It brought me such joy,” she recalled. Middle school years were hard for her, and the garden, full of bursting colors, made her neighborhood brighter. Now, Reuter pays it forward, giving her neighbors, young and old, a happy garden to gaze at in the spring, summer and fall.
Likening her garden to a painting, she approaches gardening like an artist who starts with a blank canvas and then lets the work unfold.
“My garden is a hodgepodge. I just cannot stand blank dirt,” Reuter explained. “There is never really a plan to what I put in; I just paint with flowers and look to see how it grows.”
To the naked eye, it would be hard to believe she has no plan. This English-style garden emulates all that is magical about a garden. There are seating areas on grass overlooking Lakebay and the Key Peninsula. A winding steppingstone path, filled with blue star creeper in the sun and baby tears in the shade, leads to the entrance of Reuter’s music studio and around the corner, visitors discover terraces leading to play areas and a pickle ball court. Best of all, overlooking that great view is a sweeping lawn for good frisbee playing and dog scampering. How could this have been created without a plan?
Reuter and her husband, Justin Foster, moved into their home with their daughter, Mera (now 18), from the Virgin Islands in 2017. But Gig Harbor was not unfamiliar to her. She grew up in the Northwest and attended Pacific Lutheran University. Foster and Reuter lived in Federal Way for many years, and she says she saw their current home before they moved to the Virgin Islands.
“We were there about a year when the house came back on the market; we had only seen it briefly before we left, so really, we bought it almost sight unseen,” she said. “When I first saw this house, with its southwestern exposure, I just knew it was mine.”
When they moved in, Reuter began working one garden area at a time. “I pulled up one area a year,” she said.
The original owners were also gardeners. “They were meticulous about their tree choice, laying what is now a 30-year-old shade garden,” Reuter said. “It is one of my favorite things about the garden and just beautiful.”
With stone stairs going up the hillside, hostas on either side of the path and a Japanese bell tree as a centerpiece, the shade garden is a retreat on summer days.
A surprise midlife pregnancy came in 2019, but that did not stop Reuter from remaking her garden. “Then baby Linden (now 5) was born and there was the COVID lockdown in 2020, but I kept going. There are almost too many areas to keep up with,” she acknowledged.
Reuter is a violinist who has been playing with the Rainier Symphony for 16 years. During the pandemic, she had a full teaching studio of students studying violin by Zoom. Now, her teaching studio has diminished, and she is growing a portrait photography business while still gardening. She is the current concertmaster for Rainier Symphony and finds herself practicing three to four hours a day. As anyone can imagine, this is incredibly time-consuming and intense. However, she says that just one hour a day in the garden helps keep early spring weeds under control and once summer hits, the garden is practically maintenance-free.
“I have a friend who is a landscape designer. She said to have foundation plants and I really am not good at foundation plants,” Reuter said. But she has planted copious ‘Walker’s Low’ catmint, white gooseneck, purple and white thistle and bee balm throughout the garden. In addition, there are lots of ornamental grasses for year-round interest. The whole yard’s perimeter has tall verbena, adding height and an airy feel.
Reuter is not afraid to spread seeds, too. “I throw zinnia and poppy seeds in the garden once in a while. The Hungarian blues (poppies) are my favorite,” she said.
As an artist who pays attention to color, she is a stickler for detail, saying, “We bought a play house from Wayfair; Justin and his dad put it together. I got color samples for the paint and they just had to precisely match the yellow of the black-eyed Susans and the purple of my phlox.”
In the back of the house, there are several raised vegetable beds, which in summer provide the family with fresh lettuce, snap peas, blueberries, raspberries and lots and lots of baby orange, red, and yellow tomatoes. “I pick the lettuce one leaf at a time every day. There’s great energy you get from eating summer salads every day,” she explained.
Close to the veggie area is a family-sized patio with a pizza oven. Reuter loves this new addition. “I could — we could — have homemade pizza every day,” she said.
The front of the house, with its views, is not to be missed. Under the home’s large deck is a bountiful rose garden of about 15 bushes brimming with color. Perennial beds frame the lawn filled with English lavender, hyssop, over 20 dahlias (which overwinter due to good drainage) and sedum. Rather than let her geraniums be victims of Northwest winters, Reuter pulls up these border plants, piles them into a wheelbarrow, stores them in the garage and ignores them for the cold months. “They do come back,” she said. “They will look bad for a week or two, but then they will come back.”
As bedding plants, she always has annuals. In 2023, Reuter’s home was on the Gig Harbor Garden Tour, and that year, she planted over 600 annuals, which made a beautiful, colorful splash.
Pollinators are important to Reuter. “I love mason bees; they pollinate a hundred times more efficiently than honeybees,” she said. “They look like flies, and I have mason bee houses. I save the cocoons and keep them in the fridge, then put them out during the spring. The bees’ life span is about three weeks, but they are just great for a garden.”
Facing southwest, the garden and the sunsets are a “show every night.” Reuter said, “We have a weather station on our roof to watch weather and light changes in the garden. We love the ‘golden hour.’ It’s so special.”
Indeed, Reuter’s garden is special, and it is her family’s and neighborhood’s joy. “Justin just supports me when I come home with my plants. He just loves the yard,” she said.
Her advice to gardeners is, “Weed, weed, weed and mulch about 4 inches deep in March and April, plant liberally so you don’t have to plant every single year, keep up with the weeding through the growing season, and once June comes, just sit back and relax and enjoy your garden. March to May is a fever dream, but when June comes, it is so good.”
Comments