ShareThisIn a children's book that Silvia Speyer wrote and illustrated, tiny toads crouch on toad lilies, tigers roar from tiger lilies and little bears wear bear breeches. But she's the real magic in this "Tale of the Magic Garden."
"This garden was zone 5 when I moved here. Now it's zone 7," Speyer said, referencing the USDA's Plant Hardiness Zones. The higher the number, the warmer the zone.
Speyer didn't really change the climate in the quarter-acre garden that surrounds her house.
But the carefully built walls and layers of vegetation have created a microclimate, where tender perennials and shrubs such as purple oxalis, crepe myrtle and 'Gold dust' aucuba thrive and spread year after year.
This magical garden is no snap-of-the-fingers trick. It took 40 years of hard work, trial and error plus a little luck. A native of Zittau in eastern Germany, Speyer knew little about gardening when she moved to Pittsburgh in 1970 with her husband, Alex. But she came from a long line of gardeners.
"It's in my genes," she said.
In the beginning, she focused mainly on plants that she knew. A corkscrew hazel (also known as Henry Lauder's walking stick) that she planted in her front yard 40 years ago is now about 15 feet tall and wide. Its picturesque twisted limbs and crinkled leaves grab visitors' attention "like a sculpture," she said proudly.
She began tending orchids and ended up with so many that she used to give some to the local Phipps Conservatory. She once had 2,000 in the greenhouse she and her husband added to the side of their house in the early 1970s. She has since cut back to 96 specimens.
Speyer said she started planting her backyard because "I got tired of seeing my husband mowing it." One of her early successes was a sunny perennial garden. The perennials are gone now, replaced by blackberries, raspberries, strawberries and rows of vegetables.
"This was a wonderful garden but I have to eat," she said. "I decided it didn't do anything. A garden has to have a purpose."
Speyer was mostly content with her flowers, fruit and vegetables until 1996, when she visited the famous Heronswood nursery in Kingston, Wash., and met its founder, Dan Hinkley.
"I was introduced to plants I had never seen before," she said. "I realized I needed to be more bold. I immediately started digging up my garden."
She went through a collecting phase, in which she had to have the most exotic specimens. Many are still in her garden, including Kirengeshoma palmate, a Japanese woodlands shrub whose yellow blooms appear in late summer; "Britt Marie Crawford" Ligularia dentate, which has large burgundy leaves and yellow daisy-like flowers; Asian jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema); and Nepenthes, a carnivorous plant from the Philippines that thrives in a hanging basket on her patio in the summer.
Speyer said her entire garden inspires her, but some plants particularly move her, such as "Joseph Rock" and "Leda" tree peonies, which have intoxicating fragrance and large white and pink flowers, respectively.
"It makes you want to go down on your knees and cry and thank God for something so beautiful," she said.
On a tour of her garden, Speyer delights in pointing out odd and interesting plants to visitors. But she also has a way with common plants. Oxalis -- which has purple or green leaves and looks like a four-leaf clover on steroids -- generally survives northern winters in containers kept indoors. In the Speyers' rear garden, it has spread throughout several beds. Along with "Black Scallop" ajuga, it provides a burgundy complement to all the shades of green.
Speyer, who does not spray herbicides and has a large compost pile, has some favorite plant combinations, including hardy pink begonias, "Rozanne" cranesbill geraniums (purple) with "Little Honey" oakleaf hydrangea and "Gold dust" aucuba. But she is the first to admit that some of her best vignettes are accidents.
Thirty years ago, she planted climbing hydrangea on an arbor and the side of her stucco house. One morning two years ago, she found the flowering vine pulled from the wall and lying in her driveway. She cut it back to the trunk, planted variegated winter creeper in between and let green bamboo wander into the bed. The result: Dark green stems and vines contrast beautifully with the cream-colored wall, foliage and flowers.
"That is the best thing, the miracle of gardening," she said. "Things just happen."
(E-mail the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Kevin Kirkland at kkirkland(at)post-gazette.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com)
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