Couple’s Avondale Estates yard is an intimate space

After George and Lin Inlow’s wedding, they hopped into their Volkswagon Squareback and drove around the country before settling in rural Maine. It was 1972, the height of the “back to the land” movement, and the industrious couple lived in a tent as George built a solar-passive home and Lin grew a quarter-acre vegetable garden for food.

The homesteaders have shed their bare beginnings in favor of a traditional brick cottage in Avondale Estates. But their passion for growing and building shines as brightly as it did some 36 years ago, though now it’s largely concentrated in the intimate backyard garden they’ve created.

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Sara Hopkins / AJC Special

Lin and George Inlow installed the garden themselves while also building an addition to their home. They modified the garden’s design as needed so it would work with the house.

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Sara Hopkins / AJC Special

The Inlows aren’t the only ones who enjoy the eclectic garden they installed behind their Avondale Estates home.

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The Inlows consulted landscape architect Dottie Myers to help design an outdoor space filled with rooms and personalized spaces, but unlike many who seek an expert’s help, the Inlows installed the garden themselves.

“You always have to figure out if [the client] is going to participate,” Myers said. “I knew they were going to be hands-on.”

George, an engineer, built a pergola in the center of the garden, now covered with such vines as evergreen clematis, wisterias “New Dawn” and “Amethyst Falls.” He crafted the greenhouse and raised beds in the vegetable garden in back of the property. He created a wooden swing for his wife and even designed and built privacy fences according to the Fibonacci series, a set of numbers named for an Italian mathematician.

Lin worked with Myers to select funky plants rich in texture that reflect the couple’s eclectic interests, such as their indigenous art collection from world travels. That’s why you’ll find sago palm, “Helene Von Stein” lamb’s ear and trifoliate-orange “Flying Dragon.”

“I like things that are twisted and bent,” Lin explained. “I’m not crazy about symmetry.”

The Inlows slowly installed the garden while building an addition to their home, modifying Myers’ garden design as needed. The goal was to extend their home beyond its four brick walls into the garden itself.

Now, French doors allow views through brick arches that frame vignettes of the garden. For example, from their bedroom the Inlows can take in the goldfish pond planted with varieties of Japanese maples, “Crippsii” False Cypress and Parney Cotoneaster. The couple also added a sleeping porch upstairs where they look onto their garden and relax.

The pergola serves as a grounding point to break up the garden into different rooms, Myers said; it connects the pond and stone dining area with a small mondo grass lawn. Here, the couple often swing after work.

Cryptomeria, red loropetalum and Boulevard Cypress create privacy walls between the garden and parking lot, as well as to separate the garden rooms. For Lin, the plants help re-create childhood memories of hiding under tables and in small spaces.

From the soft-edged raised beds George built to prevent Lin from getting splinters to the “Blushing Bride” hydrangea they planted in honor of their daughter’s at-home wedding, the Inlows say their garden is a deeply personal expression of themselves and their family.

“There were moments we sounded like the Bickersons out in the garden; we both have strong opinions,” Lin joked. “[But] he builds things to last … marriage included.”