AN ELKINS PARK GARDEN SANCTUARY

The picture window in Rich and Angela McCracken’s family room frames a lush backyard garden, filled with blue hydrangeas, orange and yellow daylilies, and purple catmint.

The plants follow the curve of stone steps that lead to a gravel patio circled by a rock garden. Beyond the garden, tall trees wave in the breeze.

The McCracken’s Elkins Park property backs onto woods. There is a downside to its proximity. “This is a deer highway,” Rich said. He has constructed a rustic stick fence to deter the marauders and planted silvery lamb’s ear and other plants deer don’t eat.

This year, he moved the tomatoes to his front yard to shield them from deer, as well as groundhogs. Basil also flourishes in the tomato bed. “We’ll have lots of pesto this year,” Angela said. Yellow and orange marigolds keep away pesky bugs.

Moving the tomatoes was not such a radical plan. Rich has several neighbors who, like him, have moved flowers, shrubs, and sometimes vegetables to their front lawns.

Instead of grass, Rich has planted a variety of perennials, including fragrant white Asiatic lilies, Joe Pye Weed, pink coneflowers, black-eyed Susan, winterberry, feathery astilbe, hollyhocks, Japanese anemone, hibiscus, tall purple New York ironweed, and more.

Gravel paths radiate like a pinwheel from an abstract metal sculpture in the center of the garden. Birds and bees are frequent visitors year-round with berries and seed heads providing food in winter, Rich said.

Containers of showy pink gladiolus, blue lobelia, and deep red dahlias flank the twin home’s front porch, where old-fashioned rocking chairs that belonged to Rich’s mother sit.

In the backyard, orange honeysuckle blossoms cascading down the side of the detached garage lure hummingbirds. Water from the garage roof is collected in a small stone-rimmed pond, which attracts frogs.

Rich and their three sons gathered stones and rocks for landscaping from the creek bed across the street from their home.

When the McCrackens purchased the three-story twin in 2012, a rotting weeping willow dominated the backyard. Rich removed the tree and planted dogwood, paperbark maple, and serviceberry trees, as well as two pawpaw trees. Two were needed to produce the large yellow-green fruit, which has a tropical flavor.

Angela said she helped plant one dogwood in memory of a cousin, but “it’s Rich’s garden.”

She’s proud of her husband’s work both outside and inside the three-bedroom, 1½-bath house built in 1900. The family room was added in the 1950s or early 1960s. In the dining room, Rich crafted the buffet and the long desk, where their sons, twin 13-year-olds and a 17-year-old, did schoolwork during the pandemic. The boys are talented artists, and the home is decorated with their framed work, their parents say.

Angela, who grew up in Elkins Park, and Rich, who grew up in Fox Chase, met at McKinley Tavern in Elkins Park, where Rich was working. They married in 2007.

Angela is a financial-aid officer for Salus University in Elkins Park, and a licensed Realtor.

Rich operates McCracken Landscaping in Elkins Park. He previously worked for Temple University’s grounds maintenance, where he was able to take free courses in landscaping and horticulture at Temple’s Ambler campus.

He is a regular viewer of BBC’s Gardeners’ World and calls its host, Monty Don, “my hero.” Don offers practical advice and encourages viewers to “take risks” and “garden as you live.”

Rich has just a narrow strip of grass to tend on his own property. He cuts acres of lawn for customers, though, and maintains their existing landscaping. Then, he said, every so often, “I am lucky enough to be asked to design a garden.”