One of the designers at this week’s Northwest Flower & Garden Show has an ambitious design that incorporates repurposed cast-offs and drought tolerant plants. She says it’s a meeting of Father Industry and Mother Nature.
Pretty impressive considering the designer is a 17-year-old senior at Gig Harbor High School and her garden just won the Sunset Western Living Award.
Courtney Goetz is one of the youngest designers in show history, and she’s making a big debut with a towering garden shed and green house made entirely from “recharacterized” items.
Using the writings of naturalist Henry David Thoreau as an inspiration, she’s named her garden “Paradise (to be) Regained.” In it she calls a truce of sorts between the ever increasing amount of humankind’s detritus and natural spaces. “What we’re doing in this garden is finding a balance in both,” Goetz says.
The garden shed is made from a used shipping container that’s been outfitted with a potting bench, desk and black board. On top of that is a greenhouse made from used windows, shutters and doors. The whole structure is about 15 feet high, a veritable skyscraper.
Surrounding that centerpiece is a variety of drought-tolerant plants such as lavender, Sedum and Euphorbia.
“If you replace some of your plants every year with drought-tolerant plants you can save a ridiculous amount of water,” Goetz says.
Another feature of the garden is a stone retaining wall that incorporates used industrial material and hardware such as old-fashioned residential radiators.
Goetz, who is the daughter of Gig Harbor garden designer Sue Goetz, is making the garden her senior project. She says it reflects a passion she has for ecology – a topic she hopes to make her life’s work.
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