Entertainment - Home & Garden

POSTED: Sunday, Sep. 07, 2008

Garden provides inspiration for Bellingham family

Pat and Bob Lundquist don't have to go far in search of inspiration.

All they have to do is step into the winding pathways of their Bellingham garden.

"Music, artwork, poetry," Bob says, "(the garden) becomes that extension of creativity."

Bob, 60, teaches voice, piano and composition lessons out of the home, and finds his work complemented by the sounds of water and the bright pops of zinnias that come in through his window.

The twisting branches and layers of green are his poetry come to life.

"When I'm upstairs and I look out the window, it's like I'm in a treehouse," Bob says.

Pat, assistant to the dean of the College of Fine and Performing Arts at Western Washington University, puts the garden's many inhabitants to paper using paint or pen and ink.

"It's a remarkable acre of land," Bob says. "It gives back to us much more than we give to it."

The garden itself is an ever-growing and evolving artwork, from the topiaries trimmed by Pat to the pond built by Bob. The meandering space is their world away from the world.

"When you go out shopping on Meridian and there's traffic and it's hot, you open the (garden) gate it cools you," says Pat, 59. "I always feel like I come home to paradise. It's very restorative."

That clean coolness comes in part from the wide variety of trees whose branches are constant sources of shade. Pat spent time researching trees to find her unusual collection. In the yard she has a spiky branched Spanish fir; a Japanese snowbell tree with crisp white blossoms; dove trees, whose fall foliage looks like delicate handkerchiefs; and a towering monkey puzzle tree.

"Trees are the backbone of the garden," she says. "Trees define and give structure to the garden."

Someday, she predicts, the trees will form a canopy for the garden, creating a protected bubble of dappled shade. But until then, she carefully plants in her sunny spots.

In one sunny patch on the side of the yard is a cutting and vegetable garden with zucchinis, cucumbers, basil and tomatoes, as well as dahlias, marigolds and sunflowers reaching high into the air. And though the garden is flush with blooms and beautiful in the summer, it's in the fall when it becomes its most poetic.

"In the fall, when the trees are raining down leaves," Bob says, "it's heaven."