The gardens of Terri Garbarini, owner of Garbarini boutique in Cherry Creek North, and Eddie Turner, frontman for the Eddie Turner Band, reflect the couple’s devotion to art, architecture and nesting.
“Eddie and I give our house and garden lots of love,” Garbarini said.
A formal haven with three distinct areas, their gardens echo details of their 1920s neoclassical Denver house and evoke the elegant courtyards of New Orleans’ Garden District. They’ll be be featured on the Greater Park Hill Garden Walk on June 25 (see Garden Calendar, Page 11L).
“Not many people see our garden, so for the tour, we really went to town. We’re obsessed and tend to go overboard,” Garbarini said, “but if you plant enough stuff, you won’t get weeds.”
A former real estate agent, Turner found the property 20 years ago in the leafy historic district in central Denver. “We chose Park Hill because of trees,” said Turner, a blues-rock singer-songwriter-guitarist. “Trees make a neighborhood.”
But when they moved in, two towering elms cast such deep shade that the couple initially did not even consider gardening. About 15 years ago, Dutch elm disease took out the pair. Their absence invited sunlight into the yard and the couple into the garden.
Both brought to bear familial roots in gardening. Garbarini grew up in Northglenn, where her late mother served as president of the garden club. Turner got turned off gardening as a boy when weeding and lawn mowing were chores. Now he enjoys lavishing time and attention on the garden.
“My attitude changed when I started digging my own holes,” he said as he potted white hydrangeas in ornamental concrete urns.
The couple’s aesthetics differ radically, yet they reached a detente: She rules the front; he rocks the back. While each area has its charms, the transformation in the front was the most ambitious: “We call it our pop- down,” Garbarini said, “and it really is a miracle.”
In a reversal of the common practice of raising a roof to gain another floor, their project included excavating 10 feet of dirt to expose the front of the house. Now, French doors open from the basement to a street-level courtyard. Brick retaining walls on both sides extend tiered, raised beds and a built-in water feature. The original 6-foot-tall retaining wall was rebuilt in red brick to match the house; the wall also screens the courtyard from the street.
“The yard takes cues from the house architecture and decor; and my house is formal,” Garbarini said.
The garden mirrors her interior-design sensibilities, lush with antiques. Aged fountainheads and wrought-iron furnishing, coupled with plants such as star magnolia, wisteria, rhododendron and boxwood hedges lend Southern elegance.
“In New Orleans, I liked that feeling of containment in those gardens that are like rooms,” Garbarini said.
The transformation was slow, Garbarini said. “It’s taken me years to get to this point. Gardening has a huge learning curve.” She says she finds it more challenging than fashion.
“Along with how the plants look, you have to know what’s going to do well in Colorado, and in this little spot in the yard. We’re talking about living things.”
This season, for the first time, they’re getting a helping hand from Alissa Shanley, owner of landscape design firm b.gardening, who will be in the garden as a docent during the tour. Her finishing touches include soothing, sophisticated container plantings; a bed where tall purple alliums hover above a mix of greens and whites; and an exotic, ivory- colored bouganvillea in an antique white urn.
Garbarini gravitates toward white- flowering plants. “White is formal, and it matches the white trim on our house and lightens up the brick,” she said. “Brick can get hot, so you want it to look cool with white and lots of greenery.”
Turner prefers color, so the backyard features fiery reds.
The door to their home’s main entrance is painted a Granny Smith-apple green — the color of Garbarini’s logo and shopping bags. The fresh hue also colors the market umbrella and cushions in the front courtyard, where the couple takes coffee and reads newspapers in the morning. Speakers pipe in music; there’s Wi-Fi; and outdoor lighting lengthens the day.
The couple relishes garden time as a restoration from her hectic days retailing and his stints of “vehicles and Motel 6’s” when touring with his band.
“I enjoy every second of it. I feel like I live in a much larger house because I have these living spaces outdoors,” said Garbarini.
Colleen Smith’s new nonfiction work, “Laid-Back Skier,” is due from Friday Jones Publishing this fall.
Formal garden tips
• Buy antique gardening accoutrements. “Old stuff looks best, and it’s the ultimate green recycling,” said Terri Garbarini. Have old metal items professionally powdercoated to refresh them.
• Salvaged flagstones and bricks lend instant patina. Her source in Denver: Mendoza Brick.
• Limit your color combinations. “Go with monochromatic white, red or blue. If you have a contemporary home, orange works. Or a classic combination: blue with white and yellow.”
• Choose plants with tidy or compact habits.
• Add boxwood hedges and upright evergreens.
• Watch out for invasive ground covers — or isolate them from other plantings.
— Colleen Smith
