Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette photos To create visual contrast, Russell Colton trims some shrubs and leaves others unpruned. Gravel and stone paths, at left, meander through the garden that fills the Coltons' front yard. Click photo for larger image. Great Garden Contest Winners: 2005 2005 Great Garden Contest Photo Journal

The Colton garden in West Deer is a love story complete with carved hearts. Created on a shoestring budget, it began as a tribute by Russell Colton to his wife, Michelle, who helped him stop and smell the flowers, he says.

Over the years, the plot has become his passion and his family's pride. Last year it was a finalist in the Great Gardens Contest. This year, Colton changed a few things and entered again. His persistence paid off, and he was chosen as co-winner of the country garden category.

A tall, lean, soft-spoken carpenter by trade, Colton has turned his landscape into a symphony of foliage and blooms. His tools are simple: donated plants, found art, hard work and lots of inborn horticultural talent and vision. Along the way, the garden has brought him new friends, reconnected him with old friends, and created an oasis and inspiration for the neighborhood.

When the couple bought the home in 1992, there wasn't much there but a frame home that Colton planned to remodel and a bare landscape.

"We had a few old yuccas, a sandbox, weeds and lots of stones," he recalls. "I had no idea I was going to build a garden."

He collected the stones in a pile. When Michelle pointed out flower beds bordered by stone that she saw on a family trip, Colton installed a similar flower bed in their yard.

"Next spring, the stuff bloomed, and it looked nice," he says.

Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette Russell Colton in his West Deer garden with his wife, Michelle. Click photo for larger image.

And the garden was off and running. While remodeling the house, now a delightful cottage laced with forest green fretwork, he also began to dig and plant.

With two children -- Michael, 19, and Alicia, 12 -- Colton did not have lots of money to buy plants. So he made do with what he could get. His best friend, Ron Tomayko, owner of Tomayko Landscaping, gave him plants that were removed from jobs or were damaged but not dead.

Colton, who oversees construction for his brother Terry's company, T.C. Construction of West Deer, was getting ideas from the landscapes on the homes they worked on. He was also reading and visiting nurseries, where he says he asked lots of questions.

His wife, meanwhile, gave him a lesson in economics.

"She taught me to buy off season," he says with a laugh. "I was always asking her why she was buying long underwear in the summer. She told me because it was cheaper."

Now he waits for the fall sales at local nurseries and garden centers. He got two coveted weeping hemlocks by waiting until the nurseries were about to close for the season, then dickering on price.

"I got the trees I wanted," he says, "but it took me two years to do it."

A neighbor's relative gave him a weeping purple beech as a gift for keeping her mother's driveway and walk shoveled during the winter. He snagged a fountain and a nicely aged statuary from trash piles and built the arbor and fence with heart cut-outs himself.

Everywhere you look in this garden, you see a reflection of its builder. He describes it as a garden within a garden.

"I have 12 or 14 little beds. I try to have a theme for each of them, but the themes all have to blend."

The water element is a small pond complete with cattails, blue flowering pickerel rush and goldfish. There and in other beds, he uses lots of foliage plants and texture. "It was an easy way for me to garden without flowers," he says.

Colton delights in shaping or "carving up" his many conifers and shrubs. The juxtaposition of manicured shapes and naturally growing shrubs is one interesting visual element in the garden.

He says the garden has become a place where he can unwind from his six-day work week.

"I can come home exhausted, but I can go into my garden and work for two more hours."

The oldest of six boys, Colton was raised by a strict Army staff-sergeant father and a mother who didn't garden. He's hardly a "traditional" gardener, but he believes there's no such thing. He's amazed at the people he meets, from all walks of life, who share his enthusiasm for growing things. And he's gratified at their willingness to share information and plants.

Currently, Colton is working on "coloring up" his garden. While he does have flowering plants such as daylilies, iris, clematis, azaleas and rhododendrons, foliage is the rule. Texture comes from common plants like boxwood and barberry, which he likes because they are very hardy in Western Pennsylvania.

"I wouldn't be good with roses," he says. "A lot of the more common plants don't get diseases. They will take the weather here."

Hoping to grow dahlias and long-blooming annuals from seed, Colton plans to build a small greenhouse this fall from salvaged windows.

His daughter helps him plant, but it's clear the whole family is proud of him. Son Michael, who is leaving for the Air Force in December, proudly showed off his father's skill when contest judges visited.

Michelle Colton prefers indoor decorating to gardening but is happy to offer an opinion. Her husband says she has a good eye for color and placement. Sometimes, she solves some of his most irritating problems with a simple "Cut it back" or "Move it," before going back into the house.

"I started the garden to make my wife happy," he says. "She wanted a house and garden.

"I got the garden I love."