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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - With summer well underway, Yellowknife's gardening season is in full swing - just in time for the 13th annual Lawn and Landscaping Competition by the city and Arctic Farmer.

Coral Rix enjoys a quiet moment in the beautifully landscaped front yard of her home on Borden Drive on Tuesday. - Heather Lange/NNSL photo

Gardener Coral Rix and her boyfriend, Darryl Klochko, won last year in the best rock garden category.

"When in doubt in Yellowknife, add more rock," said Rix with a laugh.

With trees shading her front yard, she explained their attempts at a lawn would just not come to fruition. That's when they decided to put in a rock garden instead. With limestone and a fountain, the rock garden began to take shape. To find straight slabs of rock for the fountain, Rix took a sledgehammer and headed out to the highway in search of some.

For her efforts, Rix won a $50 gift certificate last year from Arctic Farmer and used it to buy another flower and plant arrangement for a planter on her deck. Her backyard is now filled with a greenhouse and garden, a space that started out as a pile of dirt.

Rix started gardening in 2005, and been learning and has been adaptable as she goes.

"It's kinda' fun, gets you outside and some decent exercise," she said.

Rix also had a tip for Yellowknife gardeners: "I have a statue of hawk - keeps away the squirrels and works like a charm."

Meanwhile, Dale Hernblad and her husband, Darcy, split the landscaping duties in their household. "Darcy does the grass and I do the flowers," said Dale.

Dale said gardening is something the couple could not live without.

"We both just love puttering around the yard," she said. "It's a very short season, but with the 24-hour daylight in the summer it keeps our garden flowers blooming and kind of evens out the shortness of the season.

"It's a sense of accomplishment and encourages the neighbors to keep the neighborhood beautiful," she added. "There is a little bit of a neighborhood rivalry - the neighbors are aways whining about how are they going to keep up with us."

But Dale also complained that the cost of gardening North of 60 is sky high. "The cost is atrocious - we have even scaled back what we were doing because it is very expensive to buy the annuals."

Stephen Woolf tried out a new gardening technique this year and is enjoying the best results he has had. Woolf describes his raised garden technique.

"It's a large old box I found four years ago," he said. "I mounted it on some blocks and I've got it off the ground and I've had the most successful garden I've ever had in my life."

Woolf believes that part of the reason for the success of his raised garden is that the soil warms up faster, making it a hot bed for growing vegetables. Woolf doesn't use fertilizer - just organic soil with some manure mixed in. Woolf also grows almost everything from seed except for a few starter plants.

"I've grown everything from potatoes, peppers, peas, lettuce and sort of changed it around every year, but this year I've grown beans, carrots, lettuce, spinach, snow peas and beets along with some marigolds and a few little herbs," he said. "I've been eating spinach for the last month already.

"It's a crazy garden - everyone who see's it is so jealous they can't believe how much this stuff has grown."

Woolf said the cost of growing vegetables is the investment in the soil. Initially, he put in $150 to $200 worth of soil, and every year adds a bit more.

Meanwhile, the City of Yellowknife is still looking for applicants to enter the gardening and landscaping competition - with applications due by July 22 and judging the following week.

"(The competition) was started to show people what you can do here, but since then the sky has been the limit," explained Mayor Gord Van Tighem. "Look at the Somba K'e Civic Plaza - who would have dreamed that 10 years ago.

"There are people that have a system and know what needs to be done," he added. "They are very adaptable."

The categories in this year's competition are lawn, commercial landscaping, residential landscaping, greenhouse, rock garden, vegetable garden and container garden.

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