Gardens
The Garden of Freedom
Planting and tending an extensive garden helped one woman start anew after one of life’s toughest transitions.


Sharon Weiser might have dubbed her garden the Liberty Garden because she lives on Liberty Street, but the name has other personal meanings to her, such as the liberty to do what she wanted with the land and liberty from her former life.

The recent divorcee bought this 1915 Troy, Kan., home in 2004, when the property had little to it but a horseshoe pit and some grass. A gardener for more than 30 years, Sharon wasn’t about to settle with that. Before she even moved furniture into the house, she ordered 440 bags of mulch, 16 tons of gravel and a dump truck full of soil. She quickly drew up plans for 12 distinct garden rooms divided by trellises and paths and smothered the grass with cardboard and mulch where the new beds would go. Part of the divorce decree granted her the right to move plants from her ex-husband’s property that she had carefully cultivated and couldn’t bear to leave behind. Load by load, she relocated them at the height of summer, often stacking them atop one another and without putting them in containers first. While she doesn’t recommend moving them this way, she was obviously eager to have them back in her life and would never retire for the evening until every last plant had found safety back in the soil.

“From this move, I found that plants are very hardy,” she says. Her discovery led to another newfound liberty — freedom from maintenance. Sharon spends only five to 10 hours a week weeding and deadheading. If she leaves town, everything’s fine when she returns. “I don’t water anything except the pots or unless I plant something new,” she notes. “I feel like it’s better if I don’t. Research shows that if you do water, roots get shallow and you have to water all the time.” It helps that 80 percent of her plants were already established and mature.

 The separate areas of the garden transition from shade to sun and formal to wild. Sharon even included a test garden near the back fence to see what would pop up before moving anything into her well-cultivated mix, and she constantly moves plants for better color combinations.

Sharon makes gardening look easy, but she doesn’t ‘live and let live.’ “If I put something in,” she says, “it has to give back.” A fine example of an area that surely doesn’t disappoint is a butterfly garden she planted to attract caterpillars and their winged counterparts. The area is an official Monarch Way Station, which monitors the butterflies’ flight from the north down to Mexico. Her trees were teeming with monarchs last September.

Among the lush greenery and bursts of color, the structure of the yard provides the backbone. The front of the house features brick paths and formal gardens, with a patriotic and neighborly front porch overlooking, while the back starts with an airy and collected sunroom that sets the tone for the more natural and whimsical garden that seems best suited to Sharon’s personality. Both sides of the house meander to the show-stopper of a backyard in their own unique way — one with a white-painted moon gate built by an Amish craftsman and the other with a former driving path densely packed with shade-loving varieties and tiny surprises like fairy gardens.

Sharon added more structural interest with a wood bridge, statuary, water features and benches. She devised a temporary wall in the carriage house and devoted it to a cheerful place for her collections. The little getaway has a fireplace, table and chairs, a potting area and is decorated with architectural and garden elements and a checkerboard floor. The main entry door is slathered with periwinkle and greeted by a formal parterre garden; the carriage doors open with a garden fork and shovel. These nonliving elements aid in four-season enjoyment. When the blooms drop and the leaves turn golden, there is still much to look at. “I think a garden should look good all year,” Sharon says, pointing out the oak leaf hydrangea, which has dried blossoms that resemble giant pinecones in winter; evergreens like boxwood; ‘Sky Pencil’ holly; and heuchera.

In all her spare time not babying her plants, Sharon recently obtained her doctorate degree. She seems a woman on a mission: to be free from boredom.