It seemed as if overnight a garden had appeared around this little house on. Suddenly, there were trees -- maple, willow, cherry, catalpa, witch hazel -- and loads of shrubs and perennials.
The next time I drove by, the garden had spilled out on to the sidewalk and was quickly consuming the boulevard with more perennials.
It was an astonishing transformation. Curiosity eventually got the better of me and I stopped and went and knocked on the front door to ask what was going on.
The Mendozas, it turns out, were very friendly and happy to show me around, pointing out the masses of bamboo they had and the special bladdernut tree and the four-foot berm they had created from grass lifted from the sidewalk.
I discovered that Manuel, a talented wedding gown designer, and Agnes, front-of-house supervisor at a performing arts theatre in North Vancouver, were both avid gardeners long before they came to live at their current address.
At their old home in North Van, they had been gardening enthusiastically for more than 13 years. When they moved, they brought a lot of the plants from their old garden with them.
Over the past four years, the Mendozas have not been standing still. They have continued to add to their garden -- new ornamental grasses, new perennials, great tubs of bamboo that they ingeniously move around in summer to create delicate screens of foliage to keep their west-facing kitchen cool.
But the most exciting new development in the Mendozas' gardening life happened last year when they decided to buy the house behind them and extend their boulevard planting the entire length of the block.
The result has been to make their boulevard gardening even more dramatic and twice as visible.
This has become a major work. There is actually far more garden outside the Mendoza's yard than inside, where gravel paths have become natural seed beds, yielding all sorts of seedlings.
"It was always our vision to create a very public garden," says Agnes. "Right from the beginning, we said, 'Can you imagine if the whole block were a garden with people walking by and enjoying it?'"
At the new property, the Mendozas inherited a vegetable garden from the Italian-born gardener who used to live there.
Manuel is maintaining the veggie patch and plans to use it to experiment with what he called "integrated gardening," growing flowers and vegetables together. The garden also contains an old, large, very-productive kiwi vine.
Meanwhile, the Mendozas continue to fill the boulevard with plants: spirea, peonies, euphorbia, ribbon grass, ornamental grasses, weigelia, hardy geraniums, artichoke, crocosmia, phlox, poppies and much more.
"We grow what can survive neglect and thrive -- anything that grows and doesn't need a lot of watering," says Manuel.
The couple have also put in rows of white shrub roses rescued from a demolition site. They've also used Cypress spurge (Euphorbia cyparissias) as a dense groundcover.
A particularly effective and arresting planting puts together orange flowered Peruvian lilies (Alstromeria) with dark blue delphiniums. Orange-flowered Euphorbia griffithii and blue campanulas in another spot have a similar impact.
Married in their native Philippines before coming to Canada in 1976, the Mendozas take a very playful attitude to the division of work in the garden.
"It really comes down to whoever has the day off," says Agnes.
Neither of them is tormented by the need to remember the botanical name of plants. The Mendozas laugh a lot over their grasping for names. They know what each plant does and why they like it and that's enough.
Manuel is more interested in trees (he persuaded the city to plant ornamental cherry trees on the boulevard); Agnes is more focused on perennials and flowering shrubs, but both of them exercise strong artistic preferences.
"We don't want the garden to look too sweet like a dessert with too many pretty flowers. We like a trickle of flowers through the seasons," Manuel says.
Both love the idea that the garden is relaxed and casual and open for the whole community to enjoy.
"We have always liked it that people can walk by and enjoy the flowers. It's ours, it's yours. That has always been our main motivator, to do something we can all enjoy," says Manuel.
And they are generous with plants, offering divisions or seedlings to neighbours and passersby -- anyone, really, who shows a genuine interest.
"We like to exchange plants with neighbours. If you see a plant in our garden that is also in theirs, it is because either they gave it to us or we gave it to them," says Manuel.
-- Canwest News Service
