Secret Gardens
Photography: Timothy Thimmes
Midway’s secret gardens are best discovered from the seat of a bicycle right around sunset, when observers can stumble upon small pieces of paradise in the heart of town. The private green spaces of local residents are often sheltered by a red-stained barn or tucked behind a low wall of mossy, volcanic rock. In plain view or hidden, these cottage gardens offer an intimate look into the rural life of Utah’s countryside.
In the cold, wet weeks of spring, before all evidence of winter has dissipated, an army of passionate gardeners begins to dig, plant and weed. Then, as if on cue, an extravagant panorama of flowering crabs, forsythia and lilacs bursts into view across the town, the plants’ fragrance filling the valley. Soon thereafter, empty pastures sprout green vegetables and wild mint, and neighbors show off vintage favorites such as peonies, lilies and climbing roses.
By midsummer, rows of carefully sown seeds are flourishing and forming tunnels of green corn stalks and brilliant sunflowers. A honeybee hovers near a leggy cosmos patch in the filtered light of day. The flup-flup-flup of mourning doves taking flight signals the approach of a gardener. She carries a hand trowel and a pail and wears a wide-brimmed hat as protection against Utah’s high-altitude sun.
Mildred Dean bends to pluck a pea pod from her son’s vegetable garden. Her eyes are as blue as Midway’s sky. “Taste one of these,” she offers. Fluorescent green peas dangle from spindly stems like emeralds. You can eat one and then another and another. At nearly 90, Dean, a native Californian and botanist, immerses herself in the aesthetic of everyday life. “A person who gardens puts her heart and soul into it,” she says. “When we moved here, we wanted a place to put things we loved. All we needed was room.”
Her family’s two-acre plot on River Road comprises open pastureland with a jaw-dropping view of Mount Timpanogos. The sunny expanse is ideal for a garden, even if the thin soil is not. Like many properties in Midway, Dean’s land is layered with limestone pot rock. She and her daughter-in-law Valerie Rutland have built raised flowerbeds made from the pot rock in their meadow. The stone planters explode with thick bunches of day lilies, irises and anemones, attracting songbirds to Dean’s domesticated natural environment all summer.\
“We don’t plant with a plan; we just plant what we like,” Dean says of the garden’s free-form layout. On the evidence of Dean’s vegetable garden, the practical potential of her plots plays just as important a role as aesthetics. Every fall, the shelves in her large home-storage room are stacked with clear glass jars of brightly colored pickles, tomatoes and peaches, all grown in her organic garden.
Sharing knowledge and plants with neighbors and friends such as Sho Sho Zipprich is a favorite activity for Dean. Zipprich’s two-story brick home, built more than a century ago, anchors the southern end of 250 West in Midway. Charming borders of plants and shrubs, rustic fencing and rock walls define her farmhouse property. She says that when she purchased the land in 1977, “There was no yard. There was a farm field. The house was a total gut job, and the only thing holding up the walls was the wallpaper.”
Unlike Dean’s hard-rock dirt on the other side of town, the earth at Zipprich’s place is loamy, riverbed soil. No pot rock. Zipprich ran “rock raids” to Cascade Springs for the shale and slate that form the walls in her garden retreat, which she started from scratch. “The first thing I did was plant the herb garden,” Zipprich says. Eventually, she remodeled an outbuilding in her backyard into an art studio and called it Wildwood Design Gallery. Then, she says, “I just started planting trees.”
Today, her Asian pear, plum and apple trees bear delicious fruit. Behind hedges of woody lilacs, a gravel path winds through thickets of plants and flowers. Antique ironwork corrals the original herb garden. A tidy grove of Austrian pines and Russian olives adds variations of green to a riot of wildflowers and rare exotics. Inviting garden benches hide beneath shady canopies, and everything seems to be blooming in color-coordinated unison.
While Dean’s and Zipprich’s gardens are exemplary, they’re hardly rare. Cruise around Midway on any summer evening (or cool summer morning), and unexpected treasures will emerge from the landscape. Tiny side-yard gardens, profusions of high-desert flowers, cheerful creeks, whimsical yard art—they’re all places built for renewing our spirits and reestablishing contact with the natural world. This summer, uncover a secret garden, and perhaps you’ll discover something about yourself.
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