Ken and Marie Tanner Home Yard of the Week

Behind a healthy, maintained frontyard, lush with beds of florals and veggies alike, a comforting park-like atmosphere exists.  This place is the home of Ken and Marie Tanner in Payson, and the current Yard of the Week.

Ken and Marie Tanner's yard at 150 South 100 East is a unique environment, a place where flower beds offer mingling space for blooms and greenery with all sorts of edible crops. Tomatoes, some destined to grow six feet tall, grow in sidewalk spaces out front, with spinach and beets as sumptuous ground covering. Thick rows of peas stretch behind them, as well as out back. Nearing the height of harvest, the latter will soon be replaced with beans to harvest throughout the rest of the season.

“I'd rather grow vegetables than flowers,” said Ken, his hands filled with fresh peas.

“You like to grow vegetables with my flowers,” laughed Marie.

Behind a wooden gate, a peaceful private park hides. A flowing creek, its bed made of stone, winds across the grassy backyard, disappearing into a property next door. There were no rocks lining the creek when the couple bought the home in November of 1989. The stones were hauled in by Ken and the water's path altered from a U-shape into the calm, winding snake it is today. Its original bridge, water-worn over time, was replaced five years ago with an attractive vinyl-railed version.

The Tanners are green, working their magic the organic way. While they incorporate mulch with the soil, they maintain the spacious lot without the aid of insecticides.

Be they veggies or blooms, their plants grow like weeds: lush, thick, and many reborn from crops of previous years: ferns, hollyhocks, cosmos, four o'clocks, and the occasional vegetable-gone-to-seed. Even a petunia plant, an annual that somehow returns in a rocky space beside the couple's mailbox, returns to the scene each summer.

“Wherever a plant decides to grow, it stays,” Marie said.