We've gone at gardening by the basics; we started with a plan drawn up by Meg Wolfe, landscape designer, and we've been working from that. We have an artist's point of view and just follow the principles of art--color, design, texture. We know what will grow here and what doesn't; experiments with certain plants showed that. We've had luck with hybrid tea roses and floribunda, if we baby them. A climbing hydrangea is coming up well this year. Of course, hosta and daylillies abound. We garden the strip between our condo and the neighbor's to the east. An arbor down the middle gives us a place to store things. Really, our garden, complete with recently added hot tub, is an outdoor room ideal for entertaining.

--Jack Rowe