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Everything's coming up roses - and lavender, daisies, yucca and more - in Debbie Dean's garden on Lee Street in Carson City.
Dean said reasons for creating the horticultural haven were many.
"When my first opportunity to own a house came up, I was excited, but intimidated," the 55-year-old Dean said.
"It was obvious my husband was not a lawn person and that there wasn't going to be any lawn-mowing. I also always wanted to live in the woods, but at my age, I was going to need a more urban setting," she said.
That was more than eight years ago.
Working at Greenhouse Garden Center for three years and taking a horticulture class from the Cooperative Extension helped polish her green thumb.
"I spent eight years learning what I could put where and what was going to be successful," she said.
Dean keeps an enormous pile of yard debris she uses to mulch her plants.
"The quality of the soil is different in different parts of my yard, so I'm always adding organic material. With clay, the ground is always either too wet or too dry," she said.
Since about 2000, she's been using a garden product that kills the grass - which otherwise invades everything - without harming other plants.
"That's the only inorganic thing I do, and I do it to open up lawn areas when I want to plant more flowers instead," she said.
Among the many varieties of colors and textures that festoon both sides of the sidewalk on the south side of her house, Dean cultivates yucca, yarrow, feverfew, Shasta daisies, playboy roses, paradise blue garden phlox, blue leadwort, red hot pokers, coreopsis, sunset coneflower and lavender.
And Dean never looks upon tending her garden as work.
"I like coming home to something peaceful. If I came home and thought, 'I have to pull weeds today,' I'd be miserable," she said.
"But the really sweet part," Dean said, "is that I'm using half the water I used to use on my lawn."
Her highest monthly water bill with the lawn was $180, and the highest it's ever been since planting flowers was $87, she said.
"And my house is much cooler in the summer now," she added.