It can take a lot of hard work to relax. When Cheri and her husband, Kelly, began work to grade and sod a steep corner of their backyard after their first child was born, they didn’t realize it was the beginning of a decades-long labor of love. The yard’s design today, a cohesive blend of lush garden and practical living areas both infused with touches of personality (Cheri restores metal headboards to create combination light fixtures and plant trellises), is a testament to the couple’s hard work, but Cheri doesn’t purely think of it that way.
“It’s not work, it’s more play for me,” she says. “It’s what I love to do. It’s my sanctuary.”
Still, sometimes the practical concerns of the garden can get in the way of relaxing.
“I don’t like to just sit. If I’m sitting with my husband in the backyard, I start looking around and get up and do something,” she says, “like weeding or the ivy needs trimming or I’ve got a deadhead. Then I can come back and sit down.”
Some folks might say that this kind of never-ending work at home is why they choose to get away for a while by relaxing at a cabin, but Cheri says that just means more work further away.
“We don’t travel much, maybe once a year we’ll do a big trip and so I just like spending time in the yard,” she says. “I think it’s better than having to do work at a cabin because I’m always back here.”
Cheri’s attention to detail, and inability to “just sit” at times, is apparent upon first entering the backyard. She can be quick to brush off compliments for her role in making the yard the lush retreat it is today by insisting she just “pokes around” and doesn’t really know much about gardening. But you can sense Cheri and her family’s quiet pride in their backyard getaway on the wall in the dining room where two framed photos of previous year’s gardens hang on either side of a photo of Cheri’s daughter in her prom dress taken next to the waterfall feature.
In the past few years, although ever modest, Cheri has volunteered to show off her handiwork to the public in Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s fundraising garden tour because she loved that you could go out and get inspiration and ideas from other people for your own garden.
“There was this one yard that had mirrors all over the fence,” she says, “and so I tried mirrors for a little while. I decided it wasn’t for me but you get to see what people do with trellis and all different kinds of hostas. There are so many ideas.”
Each year, there is a new project and a new source for ideas, but the garden’s progression started over two decades ago. Cheri first caught the landscaping bug in the early 90s when she attended an evening class on landscaping to come up with a new backyard plan. This class was instrumental in determining design elements the family would still be enjoying 20 years later.
“That (class) started me off,” Cheri says. “I had a wonderful instructor and I learned a lot and she actually talked me into putting in the burr oak tree.”
Today, the oak cuts a more imposing figure and acts as a main focal point in the grassy yard area. It’s become a source of amusement for Cheri and her family, too.
“It’s very entertaining for us because we’ve had squirrels and a chipmunk who run all around when the acorns fall and they bury them all over the yard, so all year long I am picking little oak tree plants.”
For Cheri and her backyard retreat, the satisfaction doesn’t come purely from enjoying the finished product, if that even exists, but from planning future improvements. The work is never done, and for Cheri, that’s just fine.
