Jim Liley doesn’t know the names of all the plants blooming in his Lakewood yard. He doesn’t have a landscape design background or even an intimate connection to carpentry.
But as often is the case, passion transcends knowledge.
It has taken 10 years for Liley to transform his average backyard into a relaxing oasis, with cascading ponds, a stone bench, bridges, sculptures and found art. Throughout it all, he says, his wife, Barbara, provided a great amount of moral support, while his two sons, Joe and Tim, pitched in muscle power.
There’s more to this garden than the orange koi floating beneath the lily pads, the soothing sounds of water gently falling, the perfectly groomed lawn, the bursting lilies and campanula.
“There’s a sense of something that we all did together,” says Liley, 52. “And I enjoy the day-to-day maintenance.”
Then, after a bit of thought, Liley confides, “Of course my golf game has really suffered.”
He soon will return to the greens with this buddies: He swears he’s not going to add anything else to the landscape except to replace aging aspen trees and put in automatic sprinklers, which he has been without for years.
One tiny pond adjacent to the backyard deck started it all. Liley hand-dug the hole for the little pond and designed it during free hours, after he finished his work selling electrical signs. (Before that, Liley helped work the scoreboard at Mile High Stadium.)
That first pond was nice but too small for fish. And so, another was dug. And then another. The largest of four water features holds about 1,000 gallons of water.
“I saw the first hole for the pond and thought that was going to be the extent of it. Then the next summer, there was another hole and then another,” says Joe Liley, now 27. “This backyard is truly a labor of love, conceived by his hands, his heart, and his soul.”
The family cars and an old van hauled flagstones and river rocks to the site, and even a downed cottonwood trunk. Liley found the dead chunk of wood near Chatfield Reservoir, and it now provides a home for a lavender-colored clematis and hides pipes that spout water.
Most of his free time has been devoted to the project, and many resources too.
“I could have had a new kitchen,” his wife laments, only half-jokingly. “I came home once and found him digging, and I asked if that was where my hot tub was going. It wasn’t.”
Barbara Liley, 51, who works in education in Jefferson County, admits she can’t help but love her yard now. “Even sitting in the house, looking out the window at the garden is just so relaxing.”
