Hummers racing through the mountainside property of John and Vera Johnson at Georgetown Lake are the winged variety, attracted by brilliant blossoms that thrive in the couple’s high-altitude perennial garden.

The tiny, testy hummingbirds dart among painted daisies and columbines, where butterflies and honey bees hover over nectar meals.

At 6,500 feet, the rock garden is a rainbow showcase bursting with blue delphiniums, crimson poppies, spiky lavender anise and purple liatris, pink Sweet Williams and puffs of blue-gray ornamental grasses.

It’s also an example of microclimate gardening, where stone-scaping and mulch help to moderate the soil temperature and help plants thrive, according to Internet sources. The rocks also hold moisture and provide little pockets of shade for roots.

Even with those advantages, the flowers at Johnson’s country home appear about two weeks behind blooms in mile-high Anaconda, about 20 minutes east.

The Johnsons, who are year-round lake residents, moved here from the Detroit area about 12 years ago, when John left his career at the Novi police department.

Since Vera Johnson was born and raised in Philipsburg, “we just knew that when he retired, we would come back here,” she said.

Two years of hard work followed.

“We did everything — the garage, the addition, the yard,” Vera said. “And I had the hill, so we just started hauling in rocks.” Today, the property is sculpted into terraced gardens brimming with flowering plants that reseed themselves every year, and vivid blossoming shrubs that include potentilla, forsythia and spirea. Forget-Me-Nots, lupine, feverfew and geraniums line stone-edged walkways; red wave petunias drip from hanging porch baskets.

Vera chooses most of the plants suited for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Hardiness Zone 3 from nurseries or seed outlets. Others, like a banner crop of Indian paintbrush, are transplanted from country road sides.

Those garden plants take little care — just a couple of doses of Miracle Grow each season. A few intruding insects are controlled with a mild spray concoction of hand soap and water.

Forget aphids and bud worms, Vera says. The biggest garden “pests” are the deer that snack along the hillside, and a shy moose that likes to nibble a mountain ash sapling.

“They’ll eat anything if they’re hungry enough,” she said.

But the Johnsons wouldn’t trade those visits from wildlife and the serenity of their garden for any other life.

“It’s what living in Montana is all about,” Vera said.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Florist, Garden Decor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.