Groundwork - Time spent fixing soil first pays off big for couple

The best gardeners understand time. They know that they must work hard and expect the reward to be painfully slow in arriving.

Bill and Sherry Beasley understand the slow processes that change clay to soil. The first lesson came when Bill Beasley took a tiller to the front bed of the house. "The rototiller bounced across the soil. What I thought would take a few hours took four days," he said.

But it is months and years -- not hours and days -- that define garden time, a slow and gradual change that patience and persistence work on the landscape.

The Beasleys were wise enough to recognize this, and spent an entire year working on the soil before they planted anything. They added Winston-Salem's city leaf compost and turned in thick layers of straw with the rototiller. They also grew buckwheat as a green manure crop. Buckwheat was seeded into the bed and turned into the soil with the rototiller. "We turned it when it began to flower, but before it went to seed," Sherry Beasley said. "We were able to get about four crops in per year."

The Beasleys live in Ardmore on a curving, picturesque little street with many gardens and rolling hills. The buckwheat-fertility program attracted the curiosity of the neighbors. It was a brave step for the suburbs, where front-yard projects are typically planted, mulched and completed in one weekend.

The buckwheat days are now behind them. The Beasley's little cottage garden is overflowing with flowering perennials. Columbines and wallflowers wave above mats of creeping moss phlox and golden creeping jenny. The flowers of coneflowers, iris and globe thistle are still to come. New shoots of clematis ensnare the low fence that Bill built to surround the front yard. A wandering drift of Sheffield Pink chrysanthemum lines one sidewalk while ajuga and lambs ears complete the pattern on the opposite side.

"We've been working on a cottage garden here, but we have to be careful of the roots," Sherry said, referring to the cherry tree planted in the center of the bed. The couple decided they needed the tree to block the sun that blazes into the front porch in the summer.

The sunny front does not prepare you for the subtleties of the back yard. After one enters through a vine-covered arbor, the garden opens on a stone-and-pebble patio that has an intimate seating area. Kwanzan cherry trees in full bloom line the tall, enclosing fence. The branches billow with powder-puff, baby-pink flowers. Off to one corner a fountain trills from a cobalt urn. Dry-stacked stone lines beds of hostas, wild ginger, solomon's seal and Japanese-painted ferns.

Everywhere little details await discovery, a whimsical insect sculpture here, a wall hanging there, little pots spilling over with flowers and birdhouses of all shapes and sizes, many of which are already occupied.

An imposing Chinese Warrior sculpture stands cross armed at the entrance to the greater garden, sword dangling by his side. The Beasleys call him Gus. Beyond, the garden widens into an oval surrounding a large bed that Bill said is in transition. "It used to be a sun bed, but as we get older we are going more toward shade gardening and cutting down a little on the maintenance with ground covers."

Bill, 62, is a letter carrier with the postal service. He has worked there for 32 years. Sherry, 56, recently retired as postmaster in Walnut Cove. The two have crafted a partnership in the garden that seems to work perfectly. "I've gardened most of my life," Sherry said. "I followed my grandmother around the garden when I was little. I'm the dig-a-hole-and-plant-it person and he's the figure-out-how-it-will-look-and-design-it person."

Beyond, the trail leads through an akebia-covered arbor, giving the impression that the garden continues. "This is one of our favorite parts of the garden," Bill said. "We call it our path to nowhere."

Moss-lined stone defines the center of the garden. Everything done in the garden was done by hand, from sculpting the beds out of the sloping hillsides, to laying drainage and carrying in massive stones to build paths and patios. The soil from the dirt basement was dug out and also contributed to the flower beds. The Beasleys also built the screened-in porch that overlooks it all. Beneath the porch's canopy a system of eight connected rain barrels funnel water from the roof to be used in the garden. The rain barrel drums are recycled pharmaceutical containers.

Both Beasleys are advocates of taking the time to build good soil. They maintain several compost drums, a worm bin and a system known as bokashi. It involves wheat bran, molasses and microbes in a fast-acting, kitchen scrap composting scheme.

"The soil was completely dead when we started here," Bill said. "Now every shovel has an earthworm in it."

Sherry said she counts spending time with a group of gardening friends -- who regularly get together to enjoy each other's gardens, learn from each other's trials and trade plants -- as among her favorite times in the garden. Bill said he enjoys relaxing with a glass of wine and surveying all that the garden has become. Like that wine, gardens get better over time.

If you have a gardening question or story idea, write to David Bare in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27101-3159, or send e-mail to his attention to gardening@wsjournal.com.