Barbara Burgum, a retired landscape architect, began overhauling the 2-acre property in 2012, but, as they say, a garden is never truly “done.” Photos: Chris Emeott
Retired landscape architect Barbara Burgum highlights native species in her Deephaven gardens.
The 1905 Craftsman home on the shores of Lake Minnetonka seems like it was made for Barbara Burgum, who purchased it in 1999. While she’s spent years preserving and rehabilitating the stately house, the grounds themselves have offered another fertile opportunity: an outlet for Burgum’s passion for gardening and the natural world.
Burgum, a retired landscape architect, overhauled the 2-acre property in 2012. She invited two of her landscape architecture classmates, Frank Fitzgerald and Fred Rozumalski, to help her draw up detailed plans. “We had a brain trust,” Burgum says. “I gave everyone topographic maps, and everyone went off in a corner and sketched.” Although the gardens have drifted quite a bit from those original plans (Burgum says she’s a “live and let live” gardener.), the blueprints laid the foundation for the driveway, hardscaping, rain gardens and other features.
Nature’s geometry comes into play with Cleome hassleriana (Rose Queen), a tall self-seeding annual, which is also known as spider flower or cat’s whiskers.
One of the first areas Burgum tackled was the western slope, leading to the lake. It had been a lawn. “It was too steep to walk on, let alone mow,” she says. She worked with Prairie Restorations in Princeton to put in a native prairie, full of plants and grasses that provide habitat for pollinators and other critters. “It’s just so full of wildlife and fireflies during the summer,” she says. “It’s got something blooming in it for the whole season.”
Pollinators are welcome and important visitors to Barbara Burgum’s gardens.
Burgum, who loves having flower bouquets around her house and often makes them up for hosting gatherings and giving to friends, doesn’t have a dedicated cutting garden. “I just snip from everywhere,” she says. She knows which plants like to be pruned and which ones must be left alone for pollinators. “Some of my annuals, like zinnias, actually have another flush of bloom after you cut them,” she says.
The peaceful view of Barbara Burgum’s backyard features a western slope with a native prairie by Prairie Restorations in Princeton.
In addition to the west-facing prairie, there are gardens on all sides of Burgum’s home. On the north side, an herb plot is right outside the kitchen door, handy for cooking. The main front garden is partly fenced to help deter hungry visitors (mostly deer) and is centered around a 40-foot cedar pergola. There, Burgum grows a few veggies—cucumbers, kale and tomatoes—and other flower varieties. In the mix are blackberry lilies (part of the iris family) with speckled orange blooms; tall golden grass; perennial sweet pea; and bottle gentian, which provides important habitat for queen bees, the only members of the hive who are strong enough to enter its tight blossoms. The south side of the house features some shade trees, which provide shelter for delicate ephemerals, beautiful shrubs and one of several rain gardens that dot the property.
Tithonia rotundifolia (Mexican Sunflower), an annual, can reach 6 feet in height and is appreciated by bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.
There are more than 500 varieties of plants—primarily native species. “I get many plants from Kelley & Kelley Nursery [Orono],” Burgum says, hitting a circuit of local plant shops in the spring, including Mother Earth Gardens in Minneapolis. She’s generous about sharing her gardens with visitors, often through tours organized by the Lake Minnetonka Garden Club, of which Burgum has been a longtime member. “I always enjoy going on garden tours at private homes, too,” she says. “You can really see interesting things that people are doing.” The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum is one of Burgum’s favorite local public gardens. “It’s just fabulous, and I’m out there multiple times a year,” she says.
Summer Cascade Wisteria is known to be a very vigorous vine. The dangling seed pods, which when ripe, explode and scatter seeds away from the mother plant.
Burgum also seeks out interesting landscapes during her travels abroad. She values the sense of place that influences each garden. “But the things that look good around a French château or a Japanese temple would be out of place here,” she says. “I won’t be making a Versailles garden here, no matter how much I might enjoy looking at it.”
Luckily for the wildlife, pollinators and human visitors who explore Burgum’s gardens, she’s a deft hand at working with native species and creating a colorful, textured landscape that’s interesting from early spring to the first frost. In fact, Burgum’s gardens were selected for inclusion in the Smithsonian Archives of American Gardens. “Gardens age,” Burgum says. “When I started this many years ago, you had to work really hard to find native plants. The next owners could put in a parking lot or a sport court. It’s nice to have a record of what’s here.”
Allium thunbergii ‘Ozawa,’ an ornamental onion, blooms from August to November.
It’s hard to estimate how many hours Burgum spends gardening during peak season. She says, “Some days, I’m working from sunup to sundown, and, other days, I’m just wandering around with a cup of coffee and admiring things.” She’s deeply appreciative of the folks who help keep the gardens growing. Nancy Kennedy, a local master gardener, has worked with Burgum for several seasons. Burgum’s property manager, Rob Rehberger, is instrumental in the day-to-day work. “This is a team effort,” she says. “I can’t do this on my own.”
Stachys byzantina ‘Helen von Stein’ (Lamb’s Ear) boasts silvery gray leaves, which are soft
to the touch.
For Burgum, gardening isn’t really about tidy borders of annuals or a perfectly curated vegetable patch. “The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know anything,” she says. “You can always learn more about the interactions between the plants and their pollinators—the interactions between the soil and the plants. You wake up excited every day going, ‘What am I going to see today that I’ve never seen before?’”
