Building a Park in Your Own Backyard

Every April, Dianne Plunkett Latham watches her garden begin to bloom. As the weather gets warmer, the blooming comes in waves. 

With 45 varieties of Minnesota native plants out of a pallette of 400 total varieties of annuals, perennials, vegetables, herbs, shrubs and trees, Latham has a list to keep track of everything in her backyard. The garden generates enough to allow Latham to supply about 1,000 plants to the Edina Garden Council plant sale each spring.

Latham—who had an intuitive sense about gardening long before joining any of the many gardening societies she is a member of today—has been planting and tending in outdoor spaces for most of her life. 

“When I was 13 my parents got a new home and there were gardens,” Latham said. “They hired someone to do it but I could tell, 'Hey, he’s pulling the wrong things, he’s leaving weeds and pulling plants.' So I said, ‘I’ll do it.’”

She promptly took over her parents’ garden and her love of horticulture has only grown in the years since. Latham has some plants from that original garden at her home today. 

Latham is Chair of the Edina Energy and Environment Commission (EEC) as well as Chair of EEC’s Recycling and Solid Waste Working Group and EEC’s Urban Forest Task Force. She is also a former President of the Edina Garden Council. Latham belongs to the Minnesota Hosta Society, Minnesota Native Plant Society, North Star Lily Society, and Minnesota Water Garden Society, just to name a few. Suffice it to say this is more than a hobby.

A garden like this doesn’t just happen without some careful planning. Latham and her husband Dan hired a garden designer to lay out the bones of the garden and elicited help putting in the pond and edging the garden. The space still creates daily work for the Lathams, who also hire someone to help with the garden four hours a week. 

“People ask, ‘How much time do you spend out there?’ Well, I wouldn’t even want to add it up,” Latham said. “We are out here daily if we’re in town, doing something: dead-heading, weeding, checking for insects and doing a little spot spraying or harvesting our fruits.”

The garden will be featured in the Edina Eco Yard and Garden Tour on July 31. Environmentally friendly elements of the garden, which was a 2010 Star Tribune Beautiful Gardens contest winner, include 2000 feet of drip irrigation (a water conservation measure), an environmentally friendly spray for the homegrown Honeycrisp apples, a dandelion digger, rain barrel, and clover left in the lawn for the bees. 

Latham will be available during the tour to answer questions about her award winning garden and to sell plants so you can go home and start your own. Proceeds from the plant sale will benefit EEC projects like tree planting. 

Visit the Latham home and four other locations during the Edina Eco Yard and Garden Tour from 1-5 p.m. on Sunday, July 31.

Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at  through 4:30 p.m. on Friday, July 29. Tickets may also be purchased the day of the tour, beginning at 12:30 p.m. for $15 at 7013 Comanche Court.

Be on the lookout for more sneak peaks of each Edina Eco Yard and Garden Tour stop before you have the opportunity to see them in person.