There is a small bit of paradise in Indianola. The garden of Dalreen and Alan Quyn is planted abundantly with flowering plants from one border of the property to the other. Not a square inch of bare ground can be seen from February through October each year.
Eighty-eight rose bushes and myriad forms of every perennial imaginable cover this property surrounding their home. There are a few raised vegetable beds and a large deck at the back. Everything else the eye can see is flowers, flowers and more flowers.
Dalreen Quyn began this journey of creating paradise only five years ago, when she and her husband bought this property in Indianola, their first home. The couple were looking in Poulsbo and had made various offers on homes without winning any bid. They had seen this Indianola property several weeks earlier and weren’t thrilled by the lack of landscaping and care it had received. But on a second visit, a poppy was blooming.
“This must be a sign. If a poppy can grow here, anything can thrive,” Quyn recalls their thinking.
The lot was mostly gravel over landscape cloth. One corner had a lilac that they kept but all else became a work in progress and labor of love for a whole year.
Quyn had spent a large part of her youth living with her parents on a sailboat, traveling around the world, and had often lived in tropical places. When the couple began creating and working on their gardens on July 5 five years ago, she feels she began to learn and grow along with the garden. Her husband labored by hauling the debris away and then wheelbarrowed the soil, compost and gravel to the areas she chose.
The First Year
The first year was mostly removing landscape cloth, weeds and blackberries, building up good soil and making new pathways to get to the planting areas. Quyn regrets not putting in an irrigation system. “I water it all by hand,” she says. An irrigation system is in the future, though.
The pathways are made with crushed granite. She also creates and uses compost throughout the garden. The compost is made of kitchen scraps and all the trimmings from the garden. That first year and in other years, she ordered materials from TILZ, which at first was only on Bainbridge Island but now has a site in Poulsbo.
Quyn’s son who was only 3 when they began all the work and planting. He enjoyed assisting in watering and asked for a place to grow vegetables and flowers. They now have several raised beds where he, now a 7-year-old, grows tasty veggies and plants calendula as a border around the veggies to attract pollinators. Quyn took classes and became a realtor so she could work her schedule around her son’s.
Choosing the Plants
The first plants Quyn chose were poppies (many different varieties) and then roses (and more and more roses). She was given a packet of red poppies while visiting the Sequim Lavender Festival that first year. She scattered the seeds, and they came up spreading beauty throughout the early garden spaces.
Next, Quyn was at Valley Nursery, looking at all the plants in bloom. She met Sally Eastman, then president of the Kitsap County Rose Society. Eastman gave her all kinds of tips and even encouraged Quyn to purchase a tree rose ‘White Licorice.’ When Eastman retired and moved to Tacoma, she gave rose plants from her garden to the Kitsap County Rose Society members. Quyn has been in the Kitsap group for several years now and created their current webpage.
“At first, I just put plants in the ground with no plan. But last year, once I knew more about particular plants, I moved them,” she says. “Now I pay attention to the plants and how they grow.”
She loves visiting local nurseries, Heronswood and Bloedel, and attends plant sales organized by garden clubs and Kitsap Master Gardeners. Of course, she purchases plants from all these sources. Since roses are her real passion, Quyn’s favorite resource is David Austin Roses and both Kitsap and Tacoma rose societies. David Austin Roses also has a free booklet on how to grow, maintain and care for roses.
“Great sources for information are the internet, rose societies, garden clubs and, of course, books,” Quyn says.
Time in the Garden
“I lose track of time when I’m in the garden,” she says, adding, “I probably spend a lot of time pulling weeds.”
When asked how often she has to prune the roses, Quyn says, “I soft prune in the fall and then do a more complete hard pruning at the end of February and early March.”
Quyn deadheads (cuts back the dead blooms and stems) all year round. She also deadheads and cuts back other perennials and annuals. All these trimmings go into the compost bins.
In the summer, she hand-waters every three or four days starting at 4:30 a.m. since she is an early riser. It takes several hours though. She’s researching how to install an irrigation system and wishes she’d done that before planting.
Quyn just recently planted a layered hedge in three heights, from tallest to shortest, consisting of shrub rose ‘South Africa,’ Lychnis ‘Orange Gnome’ and lavender. This planting forms a living hedge. It has the advantage of providing enjoyment with color and texture for both the Quyn family and the neighbors next door.
In a shady area, she’s working on a Zen garden with native plants, hostas and hydrangeas. Quyn has plans for a future iridescent garden with only white blooms and foliage in all shades of green. She’s calling it the moon garden.
Partial Plant List
The photos in this piece show portions of the story of this abundantly flower-decorated space. Here are just a few of the plants in the garden:
- Anemones (several varieties)
- Dwarf Hydrangea paniculata
- Miniature rose ‘Sunblaze’
- Tree rose ‘White Licorice’
- ‘South Africa’ rose (purchased from Raft Island Roses) — blooms for months with blooms in yellow and apricot hues
- Climbing rose ‘Altissimo,’ a five-petaled blood red rose — pollinators love it
- Phlox
- Peonies (red, white, pink and speckled varieties)
- Lilies
- Hostas
- Hellebores
- Lychnis arkwrightii ‘Orange Gnome’ with deep purple leaves and orange flowers
- Poppies — red, purple and orange California poppies
- Butterfly ranunculus
- Rose campion with silver leaves and purple flowers
- Fuchsias (several varieties)
- Raspberries
- Strawberries
- Lavender
Future Gardening Plans
A future dream is to have a home one day on much more land surrounded by gardens. Quyn wants to create a place where she can invite the public in to learn how to create even more beauty out of the plants they can grow. She makes leighs and flower crowns for various friends’ celebrations and would love to teach the public this skill too. She went to Hawaii this spring to decorate for a friend’s wedding.
Quyn’s also been dyeing with plants and most recently used flower parts and petals to do colorful printing on various fabrics. “I want to teach visitors to this future public garden how to plant something and watch it grow,” she says. In the meantime, she welcomes friends, neighbors and visitors into her current garden.
Comments