Photographs by Tracy Walsh
Storybook Garden
A profusion of colorful flowers, blooming vines, and textural shrubs flanks the winding sidewalk leading to the pink cotton candy–colored front door of Sandy Mangel’s enchanting 1913 bungalow. It’s no wonder the neighborhood kids call it “the Cinderella House.”
Sandy Mangel
For more than 40 years, Mangel and her mother owned Two’s Company, a design studio and retail shop, just blocks away. Now retired, Mangel still takes the occasional design job but lately has added Master Gardener to her résumé, which seems a mere formality. You only need to step into her dreamy front yard to see she knows what she’s doing.
When Mangel and her husband, Doug, first bought the home 52 years ago in the East Harriet neighborhood of Minneapolis, there was only a swatch of sunshine along the back fence where she tended some roses. “No one was really gardening in their front yard at the time, just trees and shrubs…maybe a little circle of flowers,” she says. She thinks that as people became more knowledgeable about what can be grown in Minnesota beyond peonies and lilacs, the practice became more acceptable and accessible.
It was her affinity for color that led her to the east-facing front yard; she wanted those bright-sun-loving blooms. “I love color in my design work,” she says. Pink is her signature shade. The garden is a pleasing palette of that hue, from palest shell to bright raspberry, along with compatible hues of yellow, lavender, purple, and blue. The garden has evolved through the years as her ideas blossomed and changing sunlight allowed more planting opportunities. She uses everyday perennials and shrubs—lilies, roses, heliopsis, phlox, bee balm, hydrangeas, and hostas—to extraordinary effect. Clematis climb high on a number of wrought-iron obelisks. Evergreen trees like hemlock and spruce add punctuation and whimsy.
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Coral Knock out Rose
Coral Knock-out Rose
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double oriental Roselily
Double Oriental Roselily
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raspberry eclipse daylily
Raspberry Eclipse Daylily
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bee dance daylily
Bee Dance Daylily
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pink double delight echinacea
Pink Double Delight Echinacea
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daisy duke dahlia
Daisy Duke Dahlia
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dalmatiAn peach foxglove
Dalmatian Peach Foxglove
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David Austin Boscobel Rose
David Austin Boscobel Rose
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Purple lupine
Purple Lupine
Mangel’s aesthetic stays the same whether it’s interior or exterior—the hallmark of her home designs and garden schemes is a layered look. She uses plants of varying heights to maximize vertical space and visual interest. All of her plantings are skirted with ground covers or low-growing annuals.
Most mornings, you can find Mangel weeding, watering, and chatting with passersby who call out their appreciation—“Love your garden,” “This livens my walk,” “Your garden brightens my day”—to which Mangel says, “It gives me great joy to have the garden and have people love it as much as I do.”
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house
Once Upon a Time
Classic cottage cuesdefine gardener Sandy Mangel’s style, starting with the clapboard bungalow’s pastel palette and crisp white latticework down to the diamond windowpanes and window boxes brimming with pink petunias and sweet potato vines. Mangel fondly recalls a bicyclist and his young daughter who passed by one day, and the little girl said, “Oh, Daddy! That’s the house I want to live in when I grow up!”
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garden
“The roses, foxgloves, delphiniums, clematis, and all other perennials are up by mid-June. That’s my favorite time. All the work is done, and I can just enjoy.”
—Sandy Mangel, homeowner
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flowers
Sunbathing Beauties
There is only one patch of grass remaining in Mangel’s garden (previous image), where undulating beds offer pops of color and varying shades of greens, from dark mossy hues to chartreuse and silvery leaves. Oriental Tabledance lilies (left) and Invincibelle Ruby hydrangea with hot-pink phlox and yellow Moonbeam coreopsis (right) are among the more than 200 perennials Mangel has planted. “Gardens go to bed in mid to late October. I mark all the plants with large Popsicle sticks so I know where everything is in the spring,” she says.
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patio
Made in the Shade
The back garden features paved patio that’s elevated above the sidewalk beyond the garden gate. The shade garden is a secluded respite where the Mangels often dine among the ferns, flowers, and hostas.
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gate
Blooming Borders
Along the north side of the house, more plantings lead to the garden gate, where roses peek over the top of the fence. “The roses get a granular fertilizer the first of May,” Mangel says, adding that healthy soil—she swears by Milorganite, a pelleted organic fertilizer and soil conditioner—keeps the plantings vibrant.
