A vibrant courtyard garden overflows with whimsy and fancy at the artistically inspired home of Katie Delmez, whose passion for artful gardening takes her to local nurseries for annuals, perennials and shrubs.
Gardens, Pools & Spas
Painted Paradise
Urban gardener Katie Delmez adds splashes of whimsy and color to her city garden.
BY
Lucyann Boston
PHOTOGRAPHY
Jim Diaz


When digging the pond in her garden, Katie made a fabulous waterfall by tossing the dirt up on the stump left from a sweet gum tree that had to be removed – making a perfect mound for the waterfall.


A whimsical, out-of-the-ordinary seating area showcases Katie’s affinity for spray-painting.


Colorful garden accessories are everywhere in the fanciful outdoor space.
MY SPIRIT DOES ITS WILDEST DANCE WHEN I AM IN MY GARDEN... and boy, can Katie Delmez dance! This saying, Katie’s motto, hangs at the entrance to her exuberant Central West End garden and reflects the rollicking, rolling, uninhibited joy that spills forth from every corner of the landscape.

It is a garden with a sense of humor; filled with color, whimsy and laughter. An old granite sink Katie rescued from a neighbor’s basement becomes a water feature, filled from the remaining faucet. A Styrofoam pillar, pulled from the alley behind her home, is suddenly garden art when sprayed bright yellow, displayed at an out-of-the-ordinary angle and topped with an oversized plastic cardinal. A flock of plastic flamingos in bold primary colors brighten a shady, fern-filled corner. Those same bold reds, purples, blues and yellows coat the patio furniture that dots the flagstone patio. The soft gray trunk of a saucer magnolia wears a three-tiered necklace of primary-colored paint. A wildly striped hammock accents a far corner.

“I love color,” Katie comments capriciously. “There’s a lot of color inside my house too, and I’m a spray-paint addict. There is nothing I won’t spray-paint. I’ve even painted dried astilbe blossoms.”

All that fun and color can’t mask the fact that there is also some serious gardening going on in Katie’s backyard.

A self-taught gardener who has “done 98 percent of the work” herself, she recalls moving into her Central West End home with her husband Jay 15 years ago, when the yard featured some trees and “an attempt at grass.”

“I hate grass,” she said laughing, “and I wanted a garden that would look pretty April through November.”

She also knew herself well enough to recognize that she didn’t want a wild, undisciplined landscape. “I like a real clean look,” she notes. “The garden is small. I wanted it to look like a living room. And I love the waterfall – it’s one of my favorite parts.”

Given free rein to do whatever she wanted by Jay, Katie’s first step was to enrich the ground she was turning into a garden, then till and re-till it. “I can dig anywhere in the yard with a spoon,” she points out proudly. “If you don’t turn dirt into soil, you’re just wasting your money on plants.”

“I had the flagstones delivered two tons at a time and laid the patio myself,” she continued.

One of the most charming features in the garden, a pink begonia-topped, stacked-stone waterfall, flows into a small, water-lily-accented pond. A wooden footbridge spans the pond and provides a path from the back to the side yard. The beautiful display, accented with trailing purple tradescantia, is a tribute to Katie’s gardening ingenuity.

“We had to cut down a sweet gum and were left with the stump. When we dug the pond, we tossed the dirt up on the stump and made a mound for the waterfall,” she recalls.

“I don’t follow the rules; I don’t read books; I‘m not trained,” says Katie, who retired from nursing 13 years ago. But she is so respected as a gardener in her neighborhood that she often helps friends with their yards. “I’m very impulsive. I get a thought and I do it. Sometimes I make mistakes.”

But more often than not, her impulses pay off. “When I wanted moss between the flagstones, I dug up the moss under the trees and stuck it between the stones with toothpicks,” she explains.

To enhance the wooden privacy fence that encloses the garden, Katie created a lattice pattern with string and trained ivy onto it, creating crisscrosses of ivy that are green 12 months a year.

While she is not afraid of tackling tough garden projects, Katie’s goal is to keep her garden as maintenance-free as possible. “I use a pre-emergent in the spring so there aren’t as many weeds,” she says.

“I enjoy just being able to sit out here and have a bite to eat, read or relax. My garden is my paradise.”



Katie’s Garden Tips:
•    Amend and enrich the ground. “If you don’t turn dirt into soil, you’re wasting your money on plants.”
•    Be creative. “You can’t believe what I’ve found in the alley that I can use in the garden.”
•    Use mirrors on gates and walls to add extra dimension and an illusion of depth to a small garden.
•    Apply pre-emergent in the spring to cut down on summer weeding.
•    Don’t be afraid to move plants or divide plants. “If you don’t like a plant where it is, you can always move it.”