Sept. 16 Column: Anne Moore Knapp

I have been really excited about today’s column because it is a profile of my sister, Anne Moore Knapp, and her beautiful garden in Gig Harbor, Wash. Here is a link to it in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: Artist’s colorful landscape designed to age gracefully.

To be honest, this was an unexpected column. Bill and I drove the nearly 300 miles west in early August so we could attend the wedding of their older daughter, Jen. I knew their garden was quite new but I wasn’t sure what to expect. It turns out, Anne’s garden bowled me over from the first moment and I just knew I had to profile it!

As I explain in my column, Anne and her husband, Bob, built their new house just two years ago. You can imagine all of the things they needed to attend to before they could even think of creating this new garden. But Anne had been drawing up landscape plans for months and thinking through everything she wanted to accomplish with it. So once there was time to work on it for real, she and Bob hit the ground running. (notice the cool gate that heads into her studio garden, to the right)

One thing I need to explain is that Anne is an artist so she understands the concepts of color and composition very well. She’s also been an avid gardener for most of her life, has figured out which plants do best in her region, and what she wanted this new garden to look like. I was so impressed with what I saw.

There were a few things I didn’t have room to include in my column. First, Anne and Bob’s new home is designed to be very energy-efficient. For example, they installed solar panels on the back side of their roof to cut down on electric costs. Also, they had to abide by fairly new rules where, as Anne explained, “Every drop of water has to drain ON our lot. We don’t have any concrete sidewalks except in one spot” (so that the water can percolate down into the soil). They also had to follow earthquake protection requirements. And they water everything in their garden using drip irrigation.

So again, we were there for the wedding (which was lovely, by the way), but the day after it, I was already pelting her with questions, taking photos of just about every angle of their garden, knowing that you’d want to hear about it! I hope that you will really enjoy reading my column.

BUT…! In addition to reading, you also get to watch this week’s “Everyone Can Grow a Garden” video, which is primarily a slideshow of Anne’s garden. So you get the complete picture. I hope you’re able to take away some helpful concepts for approaching the design of a garden. But as Anne told me, above all else, do what speaks to you. Here’s the video: