Denny and Sam Johnson’s garden is a comfortable arrangement of cactus and planters. But not every garden is just about the flora.
Tour their garden, and you’ll see a collection of outdoor art and artifacts that ties it all together.
And all these things have their story.
Take the brick wall that encloses a front patio. It curves around large planters, some fan palms and a shade tree — blocking out the street and creating a quiet place to relax.
The wall is made of Mexican brick, Denny said.
The secret ingredients are horse manure, cow manure and, he added: “A little bit of clay.”
The result is an unpretentious wall accented in muted earth tones. It blends in with the comfortable Santa Fe-style home the Johnson have lived in for nearly nine years. They have spent those years building a garden that extends that comfort to the outdoors, with many talking-point touches — like the wall.
They will share their stories from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, as their garden is one of seven featured stops on the third annual Casa Grande Garden and Landscape Tour. Six homeowners and Seeds of Hope will open their gardens to the public.
It’s free, but you have to provide your own wheels.
The Pinal County Cooperative Extension Office and Casa Grande master gardeners sponsor the tour.
The Johnsons’ home backs up to the second hole of Dave White Municipal Golf Course. Denny is a retired Minnesota game warden. Until recently, Sam — that’s her nickname — ran a business designing and creating faux walls.
When they moved in, they started with something of a blank slate. They didn’t call in landscapers for an instant makeover. They built up their garden almost piece-by-piece during the years. Some of the projects, in fact, were a little more hands-on than they anticipated.
The wall, for instance.
“We hired a couple of guys, but they didn’t show up,” Sam said. “And we ended up doing it ourselves.”
Denny suggested they had to do something with the bricks.
“We had pallets of them in the front yard,” he said.
The wall, it happens, fit in with their plans to create a patio with a southern exposure.
“The main focus in having this in the front like this was in the winter, you get the sun,” Denny said.
Sam added they’re from Minnesota, so they often receive guests from their home state. All could appreciate the winter warmth of an Arizona southern exposure.
And while their guests soaked up the sun, they probably asked about the bell. It’s mounted on a wooden frame and looks about half the size of a Mini Cooper.
“It came from Cactus Dan,” Denny said.
Cactus Dan, it happens, is Dan Sudnick. His garden is part of Saturday’s tour. Denny got a lot of cactus from him, too. He’s not called Cactus Dan for nothing. His own garden is like the cactus wing of the natural history museum. He labels his cactus.
But the Johnsons’ cactus garden is a delight as well. It’s in the back. To get there, you walk along a narrow path between the house and the wall on the property line. This in itself is part of the tour. The passageway leads under a grapevine clinging to an overhead trellis.
Then it opens up to the backyard. And here is where nature meets creativity.
And the cactus is a big part of that. In what might be called the backyard’s northeast quadrant are cacti from Arizona to Argentina. The Arizona portion includes a large two-armed saguaro. The Argentine example is the Argentine giant. It’s all arms, spreading out and reaching up.
“The flowers are the size of dinner plates,” Sam said.
Right now, the plant is just sporting small fuzzy buds. But maybe just one of them will open up to full dinner-plate mode by Saturday. The Johnsons enjoy the cactus garden, in part, because arranging cactus is something of an art form in itself.
“When you put them all together, it’s a very creative process,” Sam said.
Both Johnsons can appreciate art and the creative process. Sam paints landscapes and Denny paints portraits.
Even the cactus garden, though, is not without its artifacts. Somewhere back by the prickly pear rise steel shoe forms, the kind once used by cobblers. They’re embedded in the ground. The Johnsons picked them up at antique sales.
West of the cactus garden is a fountain. Nearby seating brings weary souls within the soothing sounds of a babbling spring.
The fountain itself looks like it was carved out of a granite cliff. And, in a way, it was. Water spills from the top of two large pillars of granite.
When the Johnsons saw a fountain just like it at the home and garden show in Phoenix, they made up their minds. That’s the kind of fountain they wanted. They contacted the fountain maker and arranged for the boulders to be installed.
They had a crane lift them over a wall from the golf course.
The rest of the back patio is green with planters and flowers and ground cover. Flagstone connects the fountain area and cactus garden to a covered patio. And, here and there, metal sculptures add art to nature.
Many were made by Jerry Parra, a sculptor who runs a trading post in Oracle.
“He does it all out of mining equipment,” Denny said.
Another sculpture worth noting stands by the front door. It’s a full-size bronze of a warrior in full headdress, poised with a shield in one hand and a lance in the other. Denny and Sam spotted it on the way to art class, near the Holiday Inn.
“The whole street was filled with life-size bronzes,” Denny said. He told his wife: “I’m skipping art class.”
They pulled over. He came home with the bronze warrior that now guards the front patio. And the story behind it.
Just ask. He’ll fill you in during the tour.
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