PITTSBURGH _ Paula Vietmeier's garden is snugged among several farms on about 1 acre in rural Washington County, but it looks nothing like its neighbors.
She and her husband have taken a one-story, cinder-block building on an overgrown patch of land and transformed it into an Italianate villa, complete with fountain and formal plantings in the front driveway, and lush rear gardens. It was chosen as the winner of the large garden, summer category of the Great Gardens Contest, which is sponsored by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Pittsburgh Botanic Garden.
The couple originally bought the former cabinet shop to store Rob Vietmeier's classic car collection. But his wife saw its potential to be much more when she stepped onto the roof. On a clear day, its panoramic vistas include the tallest buildings Downtown. On the Fourth of July, they can see as many as six fireworks displays.
She made up her mind that day to build on top of the existing building, leaving the first floor for up to a dozen cars and the second for the family home. And she made plans for the overgrown backyard.
"I immediately had visions of a woodland garden," she says.
The couple moved into a trailer on the property and work commenced. After two years of demolition and construction, they had a new home. Then she turned to the garden. A 100-foot swath of shady slope was covered with briers, poison ivy and saplings, not to mention the two storage trailers that needed to be cut up and removed. She cleared the slope and put down landscape fabric, then added boulders for dimension.
"In 2006, I started to bring in lots of my perennials to start filling the sparse landscape," she wrote in her contest entry.
Among the hostas she planted are 'Sum and Substance,' 'Praying Hands,' 'Aphrodite,' 'Stained Glass Window' and 'Empress Wu.' She also made use of ferns, adding in ostrich, ladyfern and maidenhair, a collection of astilbes and lots of groundcovers such as creeping Jenny, lamium, ajuga, sweet William and creeping thyme.
Thanks to careful selection, she has created a visual tapestry of both texture and color. Over the years, she has divided the plants over and over again, filling in the 30-foot-wide bed. Each spring she buys several flats of 'Angel Wing' begonias. They add a spark of color, carry the eye down the expansive bed and tie the garden together.
Vietmeier has had some failures along the way. When heavy rains turned part of the slope into a waterfall and washed her plants away, she installed a dry riverbed that is both functional and attractive. She's also had deer issues, although dogs Tessa and Hanna patrol the grounds and help keep them at bay.
She's had no formal training in landscaping, but it's clear she has a good eye and a green thumb. The long garden bed is filled to the brim with healthy, lush plants. She says the space no longer requires lots of maintenance or mulch because the plants have taken over.
She has carefully chosen garden ornaments and placed them throughout. Bird houses scattered about are home to a variety of species. Large containers are placed around the yard and huge hanging baskets dangle from trees. A tiny fairy garden in a large bowl lives in a gazebo.
In one corner, against a stucco wall, is a large Norfolk Island pine that she rescued from the trash. It now is quite large and overwinters with her husband's cars.
She says her husband would rather have cement than garden, but it's clear he's proud of her creation. Each year, they have a party where their friends can admire his cars and her garden.
"My husband and friends call it 'Paulaville,'" she says, "I love that."
A visit to Paulaville is a lesson to visitors: How to turn an eyesore into a showstopper.
