An Artful Approach

The whimsical handiwork of a couple of artistic green thumbs enlivens their shady acre of Wisconsin woodland

- Deborah Baldwin

THEIR FIRST TASK WAS TO CLEAR SOME SPACE . Out went rocks, weeds, more rocks, matted undergrowth, spindly saplings, and choking vines. Finally it was time for the novice gardeners to create art, using earth as a canvas and painting with plants.

Or in this case, plants plus birdbaths, bowling balls, septic-tank parts, urns, fusedglass artwork, stone pavers, pottery, birdhouses, benches, stone walls, glass mosaics, vintage signs, chimney flues, and the occasional mirror, window frame, and fireplace screen.

“I really like junk,” says Barbara Henderson, laughing as she recalls the gradual accumulation of—let’s call it found art that now decorates the gardens she cultivates with her husband, Doug, just north of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

A fiber and textile artist before she started arranging leafy hostas, flowery annuals, and begonias in her favorite shade of red, Barbara views the gardens they have created as tapestries incorporating man-made and natural materials alike. “I was thinking about weaving colors and textures throughout, so the garden is cohesive,” she says of the process.

A palette of greens and reds unifies the former jumble. If you could hover overhead like one of the bald eagles that frequent the place, you would see colorful objects threaded through foliage like beads on a string, only bigger.

What you do see at this time of year—lush, layered foliage grouped in “rooms” from one end of the narrow lot to the other—didn’t exactly happen overnight. When the couple purchased the place in 1973 as a summer retreat, it was eight miles from the nearest grocery store in a scrabbly, wooded area just west of a limestone cliff known as the Niagara Escarpment (“one of the seven natural wonders...of Wisconsin,” in the words of a travel guide).