There are landscapes designed for refined entertaining. And there are gardens created for quiet contemplation. Some people are determined to cultivate their little plot of suburbia into mini farms with raised beds, beehives and chicken coops.
And then there are people like Jon and Laura Sooy. For the Sebastopol couple, the homefront is all about having fun.
Their property is like a mini Club Med, with a putting green, a cabana equipped with satellite radio and palm frond fan and even a green slide that runs parallel to steps that lead to the lower reaches of the yard. Sliding is way more fun than taking the stairs.
"We love to play. Especially right now as the sun is starting to come out for the summer," said Jon Sooy, 44, who did most of the work with his wife, a fitness fanatic. "The beauty of this place for me is that it's a blank canvas."
"I love home improvement projects and building things. I don't get to do that for a living, so I take it out on my property."
The Sooys aren't alone in their Peter Pan ways. Other families, even older couples with kids long gone, defiantly maintain their water-guzzling lawns for games of croquet and badminton. They wouldn't live without their pool, their horseshoe pits and their bocce courts. The Sooys even have a zipline for their younger visitors.
These homeowners see their backyards as their own personal parks, places to play hard and indulge their imagination, no matter what their age.
"How about a real boat, docked to a pier, that &‘landed' on a bed of lava rock? A waterfall that drops into a creek with fish? An &‘island' complete with a hammock?" says Patti Foster, describing the Neverland she and her husband Allan carved out of their Windsor backyard.
Recycled materials
The pair created it, one attraction at a time, out of recycled, reclaimed and found materials.
"We see someone is throwing something away, we're right out there grabbing it," said Foster, an insurance agent. "And we use all local materials. We got all our rock, bark, chips and things from Alextra Landscape Supply in Windsor."
The Fosters' yard is a little like an amusement park, as many a visitor has observed. The focal point is the wooden dock, off of which is moored a real, full-sized motorboat. Watch out for the gator that appears to be rising from the rocky bayou.
But if you're not up to a pretend cruise, you can always mosey over to a kind of Tom Sawyer's Island. You cross a footbridge over a creek stocked with mosquito fish and find yourself entering a little world of relaxation and pretend. Stretch out in the hammock. If you feel eyes on you, that would just be the garden gnomes and other fanciful statuary that inhabit the isle.
Adopted &‘uncle'
Foster said their adopted "uncle," former Windsor Fire Chief and neighbor Milo Strawn, taught them the secret of reclaiming, reusing and repurposing. They couldn't help but be impressed by his resourcefulness.
Strawn, who recently passed away, rescued a beautiful red barn slated for a fire department burn exercise, and moved it piece by piece to his property.
The Fosters have a multi-generational household, sharing the property with their daughter, Amy, her husband, Michael, and their 5-year-old son, Jeffrey, who also has his own fanciful playground in the yard.
"We wanted a place where Jeffrey could be safe to use his imagination, and we needed a place we could both use in the evening," said Foster, explaining that the project just kept going from there like a fast-growing vine.
"Now Jeffrey brings us water and Popsicles on hot days and tells us what he wants us to do next," she says with a laugh.
Janet Leisen said she and her husband have developed their 8.5 acres in Santa Rosa's rural Mark West area over many years into a family resort with pool, horseshoe pits, play house and a large lawn for croquet, badminton, volleyball and other lawn games. Near the lawn are eight picnic tables picked up at the Jail Industries spring sales.
Be able to do things
The Leisens' oldest daughter, her husband and 2-year-old twins live in a second house on the property, a former Arabian horse farm complete with stables and tack room. At one time they had a pony, but their plans for more horses fizzled when their daughter took up softball instead.
"Our biggest thing is we really enjoy entertaining people. We're not &‘sit around, eat and gossip people.' We like our guests to be able to do things," said Leisen. When guests are over, there invariably is a pick-up game in the horseshoe pit that sits along one of the three creeks that criss-cross the property.
The Leisens use much of their acreage for active play and entertainment. Most everything centers around the swimming pool and an adjoining covered gazebo, where a friend's band has played a number of times, providing live entertainment during parties.
Like the Fosters, they have distinctively different areas for different moods. A tiki hut and palm trees went up in a sunny spot after a trip to Kaui inspired them to bring a bit of The Islands back home.
"We can just put out lounge chairs and late in the evening get sun there," Leisen said.
The newest attraction is a bocce court her husband and son-in-law installed. Nearby are more picnic tables and a firepit made out of an old washing machine tub. For those nights when they feel like getting away to the woods, there is a stand of redwoods with a little camping area where their now-grown kids used to pitch tents.
Blank canvas
The Sooys said they began developing their backyard playground as a way to control a huge grassy space in back of their home.
"The entire property was a blank canvas," said Jon, who also was resourceful in getting materials from places like Craigslist.
The cabana was built from posts salvaged from a Napa Valley winery. A retaining wall by the six-hole putting green was made from concrete Sooy recovered from a Petaluma farm. The job required repeated trips with a sledgehammer and truck.
The couple love to gather around the firepit at night with friends, listening to music piped in through speakers Jon hid in a pair of old fashioned rural mailboxes. That's the plan for this year's Fourth of July. No need to go to a park when the park is in your backyard.
"The cool thing about our place," Jon said, "is that we can turn the kids loose out there for hours until they're really worn out. The rest of us will listen to music, have a few beers, barbecue, eat, have fun and just talk."
You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 521-5204 or
meg.mcconahey@ pressdemocrat.com.
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