PINEDALE – The Sage and Snow Garden Club discovered an amazing garden of vegetables and flowers at 144 West Buffalo Street in Pinedale and awarded it a coveted Garden of Beauty Award.  

When you first enter Mark and Marianne Mrak’s back yard in north Pinedale, you see an oasis of colorful flowers – sweet peas, nasturtiums, zinnias, marigolds, petunias, pansies, calendula, lobelia, cosmos and bachelor buttons – all beautifully displayed in large pots. Turn the corner and gasp at the amazing crop of tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos growing in lean-to open hot houses which they close at night and open during the day.  

Beyond the hot houses is a large open bed of mature carrots. Next are beds filled with beans, peas, beets, rutabagas, onions, basil, cilantro, parsley, thyme and oregano. To fill the empty spaces, the Mrak’s added lick tubs of potatoes and cabbages. New this spring are narrow beds and planters along the fence filled with flowers and raspberries. 

Mark starts his seeds indoors in the spring for transplanting outside in early summer. The corrugated metal beds are from Savannah Gardens and Vigo Garden Beds. All the garden beds and planters are on a drip irrigation system, designed by Mark. 

Marianne said, “He makes it work or modifies it until it works.”  

Around another corner is a very successful composting operation for making compost to enrich the vegetable and flower gardens’ soil. Layers of gravel neatly line the garden paths between the beds. The Mrak garden will be one of the featured gardens on the annual Sage and Snow Garden Club Tour on Saturday, August 10. Look for details on the tour on page 4.