Tony Tye, Post-Gazette A rose blooms in Beverly O'Leary's garden in Beaver.

By Susan Banks
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Karen Atkins' goal for gardening sounds much simpler than it is: "to take something ordinary and make it stunning."

But Ms. Atkins, a landscape designer and proprietor of Proper Gardens, manages to achieve it often, both in the gardens she designs and at her own home in Daugherty, Beaver County, outside New Brighton. Her plot and two other works will be among 25 gardens on display from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. tomorrow for the 2006 Open Gardens Day Tour, a self-guided tour sponsored by the Botanic Garden of Western Pennsylvania.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Karen Atkins stands in front of her home and garden in Daugherty, Beaver County, which will be on the Botanic Garden of Western Pennsylvania's tour tomorrow. Click photo for larger image.

Gardens on Mount Washington, in the North Hills, and in Beaver and New Brighton will be open for the tour.

Ms. Atkins, a Whitehall native, is an Anglophile and proud of it. Her gardens reflect her love of parterres, mazes, and cottage gardens with a distinct British twist, ideas garnered from the time she spent living in England.

In fact, her new idea for a garden design business is a pretty old one: Take a house and create a garden around it that is a living amendment to the architecture, reflecting not only the period and style of the home but also defining the family within. She wants her gardens to be used as living space, every day, not just on special occasions.

Here she veers away from many other garden design firms, which, she says, "concentrate on how landscapes look from the street." Not that her gardens look bad from the street. But her emphasis is on how it looks from inside the home, both upstairs and down, in all seasons. After all, the homeowner is the one who will enjoy it most.

Tony Tye, Post-Gazette Beverly O'Leary's garden in Beaver will be shown on the Botanic Garden tour. Click photo for larger image.

While this may mean she can't design a garden for every single residence, it doesn't mean she works around only older homes.

Beverly O'Leary and Gil Scholes' house on River Road in Beaver is a modern one, with a small front garden that is designed so that the residents can view it from the second floor, where most of the living space is. Ms. Atkins' design was influenced by the stained-glass windows in the door. The small space is edged with her trademark box hedges (local nurserymen call her the "Boxwood Queen") and filled with scarlet 'Knock Out' roses and misty blue nepeta 'Six Hills Giant.' Drumstick alliums pop through the nepeta, for added accent. The center of the space is tied together with an urn planted with colorful violas.

For the couple, Ms. Atkins also designed a quaint patio in the rear that melds with the new architecture but still harkens to older, more formal garden design. The space is tweaked with creative birdhouses, a small fountain and a custom-made trellis. Conifers, hostas, lupines, hydrangeas and roses join a sprinkling of annuals added by Mrs. O'Leary, who laughs as she admits she consulted with Ms. Atkins before buying the flowers.

"Karen likes pastel colors," she says, "so we let her edit our choices."

Ms. Atkins also maintains the garden, although Mrs. O'Leary and her husband take care of some of the minor chores themselves.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Several alliums are growing along the side of Karen Atkins' home. Click photo for larger image.

The gardens that surround Ms. Atkins' 156-year-old farm near New Brighton are also abundantly planted -- some would say crammed -- from the start to get an established feel in a short period of time. She says it's as easy to pull out plants as it is to pull weeds.

Her own garden is definitely a work in progress. In the six years her family has lived there, she has installed two Colonial Revival parterre gardens. The one in the front is in the shape of a snaffle-bit, a nod toward her love of riding and horses. The side garden is also a parterre, this time a square within a square. Barn stones are used to create an air of rusticity. In the rear are looser, cottage-style gardens and a cutting garden.

She has planted the David Austin roses 'Abraham Darby,' an antique salmon, and 'Glennis Castle,' a white, to complement the Brunschwig & Fils documented-print wallpaper in the front hall. She's also has roses lining the rear drive and is working on other areas of the landscape.

The 11 1/2-acre farm she tends with husband David also includes paddocks for her two horses and four sheep and plenty of room for son Henry, 8, and daughter Zoe, 6, to play. Her family and her small design and maintenance business leave her little time to work on her own property. But her goal for it is the same as for any she creates: "to make it stunning."

The third garden that Ms. Atkins designed on tomorrow's tour is at the Merrick Art Gallery in New Brighton. It's based on Victorian carpet gardens, whose design mimics intricate carpet patterns. The design, outlined in 150 boxwood plants, reflects an antique crochet pattern. Even the fleur-de-lis-shaped finials on the garden fence are in keeping with the theme.

Tony Tye, Post-Gazette A flower bed graces the front of Beverly O'Leary's home in Beaver. Her garden was designed by Karen Atkins. Click photo for larger image.

While Ms. Atkins espouses older design ideas, she's not afraid to use newer cultivars in her work. For example, she likes the new 'Knockout' series of roses because they give lots of color without a lot of maintenance.

"I don't want the care of the garden to be harder than it has to be," she says with a smile.

Ms. Atkins tries to spend lots of time with prospective customers before designing to gauge how much time they will spend in the garden and how and in what season it will be used.

"I want it to be integrated with the owner," she says. "The house gives me a clue as to what I'm going to do. I want everything in harmony, both inside and out."

Tickets for the self-guided tour cost $40 and are available at the Botanic Garden offices, 850 Poplar St., Green Tree, and area businesses. Information: 412-444-4464.