By Lisa Kremer
Tacoma News TribuneStroll through Monte Powell's garden in the heart of Federal Way, Wash., and you might notice the sound of cars zooming by, children laughing in the swimming pool next door and jets thundering overhead.
But spend a few minutes wandering through the lush pathways, counting colors in the thick perennial borders, listening for the trickling stream, and you may discover that those exterior noises fade. You'll find yourself in a quiet, green world.
Powell is a home builder and urban developer who created his garden, PowellsWood, because he wanted to give his town an oasis. He bought a 40-acre parcel in 1992 to prevent it from being developed and devoted three acres of it to PowellsWood, which includes a stream restoration project and often is open to the public.
Sound too good to be true? A developer preserving green space to help the community?
Linda Kochman, a Federal Way city councilwoman, says Powell is a civic treasure. "I've been here 30 years, and I know," she said. "We're fortunate to have Monte and his wife and family. ... It's nice to have a natural setting and a natural respite from the city and to have such beautiful ideas to take back for your own garden."
Powell has been working on PowellsWood for years and periodically opens it to the public for garden tours and visitors.
Visitors will see pockets of native plants contrasted with bright exotics. The space is divided into areas Powell calls "rooms." They're defined by enormous hedges, which also disguise nearby tennis courts and busy roads.
A walk through PowellsWood begins with the Entry Garden, with a bed of enormous exotics and eye-poppingly bright perennials. Concrete steps lead down to the garden's centerpiece, a long grassy walkway with wide perennial borders, filled with bright dahlias, fuchsias and snapdragons in front of cooler-colored mahonias, Spiny Bear's Breeches, Acanthus spinosus, sedums and clouds of pink astilbe.
In one of Powell's favorite corners, a deep purple smoke tree complements bright white lilies and a dusty green painted fern at its feet.
Carefully disciplined gardens surround a rental house Powell has on the property. He and his wife live nearby.
Under Douglas firs, Powell and his full-time gardener, Avril Steele, are growing hydrangeas, hellibores, hostas, ferns, viburnum, astilbe, oxalis and vivid-leafed fuchsias.
He started thinking about retiring more than a decade ago and began taking gardening classes then. He finally sold his business to his sons "a couple of years ago," he said. He and his wife Diane have five children and 13 grandchildren.
"We really do believe that green open space, whether it's gardens or parks ... are an important part of the urban tapestry," Powell said. "People need a place where they can leave their homes, come and be quiet, and restore their peace."
"When we came here, this place was totally desolate," Powell said. "We had to remove old cars, debris, concrete."
Local solid waste officials learned of Powell's plans to landscape part of the property and asked him to test a new mulch. They provided truckloads of the mulch, plus five other types for comparison.
Through his experience with the mulch and his gardening classes, Powell has become a believer in soil amendment. He doesn't use pesticides or chemical fertilizers, relying on soil quality to nourish his plants.
"You can amend any soil, really," said Powell, who became a master gardener in 1989. "In many cases it's a matter of adding organic matter and digging it in. I used a plow, an old farmer's plow. A lot of this was glacial till and construction waste, so the soil was devoid of organic matter."
PowellsWood isn't a fantasyland -- stray blackberries occasionally make their presence known, small weeds pepper the lawns and moles have assassinated some favored plants.
But Monte and Diane Powell often take vacations visiting gardens around the world and they're quietly pleased with how PowellsWood measures up.
"It's pretty good," Powell said.
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