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Gayle Taylor
There’s no doubt that gardens are personal forms of expression, but we have yet to come across one that’s more personal than Gayle Taylor’s. As she led us on a tour, we counted more than 70 pieces of art, the vast majority created by Gayle and her late husband, Larry Taylor, who passed away in 2007. The enormous gate that leads into the back garden – Gayle calls it the “gate to my world” – is comprised of metal pieces from Larry’s studio (she estimates Larry left behind 2,000 pounds of scrap metal when he died). Sculptures of all shapes and sizes are tucked into nooks and crannies, planted underneath flowers and hanging from trees. You’ll even find a tiny fairy house if you look closely. Gayle has divided her garden into smaller plots, and the memorial garden has one of the biggest impacts. It is filled with plants that remind Gayle of the people – and animals – in her life who have passed on. In honor of Larry, whose hiking boots Gayle turned into planters, she’s growing bamboo and grape vines. In honor of her father, there’s a Japanese maple tree. For her cousin, a bronco rider, there’s horsetail. And in honor of a beloved Abyssinian cat, Gayle planted cattails. “These aren’t necessarily plants that are known to grow well in this area, but they all thrive here,” she says.
Gayle was born and raised in Southern California. She and Larry moved to Sedona via New England in 1998 when he retired from IBM and she retired from Bank of America. At that point, art was “mental therapy,” but the couple soon learned there was a market in Sedona for their collaborative sculptures. Gayle has been gardening her entire life, but when she moved to Sedona, her yard wasn’t fenced, which meant she was constantly dealing with wildlife eating her plants. Then in 2008, she was forced to build a wall around her house when AZ-179 was widened (Gayle’s house backs up to the road). The metal-and-adobe wall turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It was built at a height that blocks her view of the traffic and prevents hungry deer from bounding over it. This allowed Gayle to plant miniature roses, an herb and edible-flower garden (one side features herbs from France, the other herbs from Italy – Gayle loves to cook as much as she loves to garden) and a fig tree. The wall also acts as a canvas of sorts: Two of Larry’s sculptures, which Gayle refers to as her gargoyles, are perched on the wall, while other metal pieces hang on the wall’s exterior for the enjoyment of everyone who drives past.
The “refrigerator rock garden” is filled with massive red rock boulders – some as heavy as 1,000 pounds. The Arizona Department of Transportation, the agency that widened the road, gifted Gayle the boulders and even placed them for her. And speaking of rocks, Gayle recently began incorporating small rock sculptures and rockscapes throughout the garden thanks to ideas gleaned from Pinterest.
While the backyard is completely enclosed, the front yard is not, which means Gayle is careful to fill it with plants the resident deer, javelina and rabbits won’t use as a personal smorgasbord. Gayle believes in being respectful to the flora and fauna native to her corner of Sedona. She spent countless hours researching which plants the local wildlife wouldn’t eat and which ones were suited for Sedona’s environment. When she and Larry purchased the half-acre lot, only five trees were removed in order to build the house. Her philosophy today is that whatever wants to grow is allowed to grow as long as it doesn’t encroach on anything else.
“Gardening in Sedona is a metaphor for how the West was won,” says Gayle, who currently works as the business manager for the Verde Valley Sinfonietta. “The West has not been won. We’ll never conquer it. But that’s what makes it cool.”
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