John Beale, Post-Gazette Jim Mitnick designed the house that he and Fritz moved into in 1992. Besides the pond and flower beds, there are beehives, chickens, doves, berries, an orchard and woods. Click photo for larger image. Great Garden Photo Journal Index to stories on Great Garden Contest Winners 2004 Backyard Gardener: Few people attempt this kind of composting

Fritz and Jim Mitnick's garden is, in a word, magnificent.

There is nothing that it doesn't have -- lush flower beds, a pond, an orchard, beehives, vegetables, berries, chickens, doves and lots of woods. It's a pastoral nirvana on a secluded lot in Indiana Township that blew the judges away, winning first prize in the Great Gardens Contest.

Fritz, who grew up on a farm in the state of Indiana, tends the garden on a daily basis, tramping around in work clothes and muck boots, followed by her two garden "assistants," a collie named Rose and an English shepherd named Maizy. The dogs keep deer and varmints out of the four-acre fenced section.

If gardening is genetic, then Fritz is the proof. She determined early on that she wanted to grow things, but not as her livelihood.

"You can be the best farmer and the smartest farmer, and you can still lose your shirt," she says, laughing.

While attending Purdue University, she met Jim, now the senior vice president of a construction company. They married, and their gardening life began. When they went house-hunting, Fritz says, the only thing she was interested in was the yard. When they ended up in Pittsburgh in 1987, they bought a home on one acre in O'Hara.

"I was always whining that I needed a bigger garden," Fritz jokes.

While at a cocktail party one New Year's Eve, they heard about a 34-acre tract that was coming on the market. Even though much of the topsoil had been stripped and sold, the couple saw great potential for the site. They bought it, Jim designed the house and Fritz started the garden, even before the house was built.

By the time they moved into the house in 1992, Fritz had already created "holding beds" for plants taken from their former home, and Jim had planted an orchard.

John Beale, Post-Gazette Fritz and Jim Mitnick with their helpers, Rose, left, and Maizy. Click photo for larger image.

"I thought he was indulging my little hobby," says Fritz. "Then, somewhere along the line, I realized he liked it, too. We have different jobs. He doesn't weed, but he has the fruit trees and his bees."

Fritz grows greens, turnips, fava beans, pole beans, pumpkins, gourds, ornamental corn, seven varieties of tomatoes, summer squash, winter squash, peppers, eggplant, onions, broccoli, cabbage and lots of culinary herbs. She cans and dries produce.

The orchard contains cherries, plums, apples and pears. The bees came as a result of the orchard, which needed pollinators. Now, the bees are Jim's passion, says Fritz. He culls honeycomb from his nine hives to make honey and last year took a week of vacation to attend a bee convention. He also keeps doves.

Fritz has her chickens, unusual varieties from which she gets eggs and all-important manure for fertilizer and, one also suspects, a few birds for the pot. One candidate is a particularly randy rooster that was becoming annoyingly aggressive, she says.

Large flower beds surrounding the house and peppering the property are filled with daylilies, rudbeckia, butterfly bush, hostas and hydrangeas. Flowers have to be tough to survive in her garden, she says. Since it is so large, she can't tend to them on a daily basis.

All her gardens must contain her "favorites," the plants she can't live without: sweet peas, nicotiana and zinnias.

"There are so many things I can't live without," she says with a laugh. "Pretty soon you have too many things."

That's the whole point of garden clubs, says Fritz. She rarely buys plants from nurseries, getting many at the Fox Chapel Garden Club plant exchange in the fall or by ordering annuals through the club in the spring. She's also a member of the Shaler Garden Club, which has a plant sale the first Saturday of May.

In April, the Fox Chapel club organizes a team to dig and divide plants in Fritz's garden that are sold at May Market in Shadyside.

"Hundreds of plants go out of this garden every spring," says Fritz.

She also dries flowers, uses them to make bouquets for a senior center and supplies cut flowers for the Audubon Society's annual dinner.

"There is always work to be done," says Fritz, who retired recently as librarian at the Shaler North Hills Library.

Jim added one more bed last year, as he has done every year since they moved.

"I said, 'That's OK, that's enough,'" says Fritz.

Now they plan on refining some of the woodland paths. On the rest of the heavily wooded property, Fritz says she's trying to get rid of non-native invasives but concedes that it is kind of a hopeless task.

"I garden for myself," she says. "It's almost like you don't have a choice, you have to garden. You have this genetic defect."

A defect that has apparently been passed along to the next generation. Son Josh is also a passionate gardener who is interested in succulents. He lives and works on the West Coast but comes home annually to help out.

"Forget Christmas," says Fritz, "we don't want to see him then.

"We tell him May, then he works the whole time he's here."