A thyme lawn saves time, energy and water

ORGANIC GARDENING has evolved from growing healthy vegetables to a more pervasive ethos of tuning in to nature's rhythms. For dedicated flower gardener Christina Frutiger, this means offering her clients an alternative to imported bouquets steeped in chemicals.

"The flower industry is a pretty toxic one," says Frutiger, who produces masses of flowers from a gargantuan organic border on her Gig Harbor acreage. From May through October, she fashions bouquets fresh from her garden for clients, friends and businesses like restaurants and dental offices around Gig Harbor. She delivers her seasonal mixed arrangements ("no daffodils in October!") in her own vases, then goes back the next week to retrieve the old flowers and replace them with just-picked ones.

For Frutiger, organics don't stop at the edge of her 12-foot-wide, 75-foot-long flower border. The sunny lawn around the house used to be a play area for her two little boys. "They grew up, and I was left with a huge, water-guzzling lawn," says Frutiger. A couple of years ago, she ripped out all the grass and replaced it with a creeping 'Elfin' thyme lawn. It blooms for four to five weeks in midsummer, doesn't need mowing, edging or fertilizing, and requires very little, if any, irrigation. "You can walk on it, and even run a wheelbarrow over it," she enthuses. Best of all, the thyme stays green all year, shading into bronze tones when the weather cools in autumn. Bumblebees love it, which could be considered a drawback, but Frutiger loves the weeks the lawn is in flower and pulsating with the happy buzz of furry bees.

Tired of pouring time and resources into turf grass? Autumn is the time to install a thyme lawn. That's because it takes hold best during the rainy season. "When I filled in a bit in spring, the plants didn't establish as well," says Frutiger. Thyme prefers poor, sandy soil, and a sunny location. "You have to weed until it all grows in, which is kind of a pain, but it gets better every year," she says. She planted 4-inch starts a foot apart, and it took three years for the lawn to knit together. In the meantime, she weeded by hand. Now, the only care the thyme requires is scything back the spent flowers after bloom and watering a couple of times during a droughty summer.

As pretty as the lavender-blooming lawn is, the main show is the spectacular flower border that rings it. Frutiger cuts every flower in all her bouquets from her own garden, from mid-spring until the garden shuts down in November. She's incorporated native plants into the border to attract and shelter creatures, as well as to cut. Her springtime bouquets include the fresh, lime-colored leaves of salal and the gauzy foliage from native huckleberries. Feverfew seeds itself through the border; Frutiger uses its touch of white to spark the other colors.

Her arrangements are an abundant, country-casual mix of lilies, roses, chocolate cosmos, dahlias, zinnias, rudbeckia, campanula, salvia and snapdragons. "I spend lots of time on each," she says of the seeming artlessness of her artful constructions.

Shrubs play their part in filling out the border and the bouquets. In spring, she uses flowering branches from spireas. Later in the season, she counts on the plentiful soft-pink flowers of Lavatera 'Barnsley' to plump up the bouquets, along with the supremely fragrant rugosa rose 'Hansa.' Toward autumn, Frutiger relies on hydrangeas, berried shrubs and native greens. Throughout the season, foliage from rhododendrons and silvery lamb's ears round out the bouquets.

Frutiger's care of her personal Garden of Eden is vigilant yet relaxed. "It's OK to have a couple of weeds out there!" she says. Even without the Backyard Wildlife Sanctuary sign, the hum, flash and flitter of birds, bees, butterflies and dragonflies tell the story of a safe, welcoming garden. "I'm a breast-cancer survivor," says Frutiger of her dedication to chemical-free gardening. "I never use anything toxic inside or out."

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "A Pattern Garden." Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com.