Phillips designed her garden to include a stone labyrinth for meditation. Black and white rocks form the Chinese yin-yang symbol in the foreground.

FOUND ITEMS

The gardener stockpiles a wealth of odds and ends that she finds or that people give her until she discovers a purpose for them. “I have about two-and-a-half acres, so there’s plenty of room to accumulate things,” she jokes. For example, she couldn’t pass up several free pallets stacked with tons of assorted stone from a local rock yard. “They didn’t want it, so I just had to pay them to deliver it. I’ve been enjoying incorporating the pieces throughout my landscape ever since.”
 
Included on the pallets were flat pieces of slate she used to top stone benches she built herself; lengths of thick stone slab that turned into a footbridge crossing a small chasm between the home and front patio; and all sorts of random pavers that she laid as the patio floor.

Using other reclaimed materials from her cache, Phillips constructed naturalistic perches to attract birds closer to the house. She cemented 18- to 24-inch sections of hollow metal pipe—left over from the building of her carport—into the ground as “vases.” They support towering dried agave flower stalks collected from her landscape. Birds perch on them to survey their surroundings, just as they do in the wild.

Phillips used some of her other stockpiled materials to build a makeshift greenhouse to protect daughter Amanda’s organic vegetable and herb garden from devastation by desert creatures. The mother and daughter took random pieces of wood and metal posts to build a frame, incorporated an old metal door, and enclosed the structure with a mix of shade screen, hardware cloth, and chicken wire left over from other projects. The garden’s offbeat style melds into its site as if it has been there for decades.

A view from the home’s roof reveals the layout of the front garden.

AREAS FOR RELAXATION

Phillips installed two matching gazebos side by side to create a shady patio area for enjoying splendid views of nearby Cave Creek Regional Park. “It was less expensive to buy two smaller structures than one larger gazebo, and I like their duality,” she notes.

In the backyard, she and son Miles laid out stone pieces in a circular pattern that she refers to as a sacred geometry disk. “I’ve developed a guided meditation to go with it,” she explains. “It is meant to be a fun, playful space to help expand one’s natural creativity and empower the spirit.”
 
Phillips plans to continue enhancing her garden areas gradually. “I work on a project, step back and enjoy it for a while, and then decide on the next segment. It’s fun to let garden spaces evolve,” she concludes.