Nearly 12 years ago, Jim Jecman's son asked him an important question.
"He said, 'I want to get married at the house,' and I said, 'That would be great,'" Jecman said. "I started on the backyard in earnest, which is the good part of the gardens."
Within a year, he began creating eye-catching spaces filled with hostas, perennials and annuals, a gate near the garage house for his daughter-in-law to take photos and a handmade wooden pergola that provided the perfect backdrop to their mid-August wedding.
That project jumpstarted a serious passion for Jecman, who now has created a beautiful park-like garden that has earned him stop status on two Bittersweet Garden Club's annual garden tour and the club's most recent accolade, June Garden of the Month.
Linda Block, 2018 Garden of the Month committee chairman, said fellow members felt like they were entering a small, enchanted forest when visiting Jecman's home gardens.
"It was full of various hostas, ivy and tall trees, with shade loving annuals tucked in areas for pops of color," she said. "There are pavers strategically placed throughout his gardens, leading you from one beautiful area to yet another."
Jecman didn't always have a green thumb.
"Before, my experience in gardening was clip the weeds and stuff at my mom and dad's house," he said.
Jecman started looking for a property a year after he moved to Jefferson City in 1974, opening up his dental practice, James M. Jecman, DDS, at the corner of High and Lafayette streets. He drove all over, but kept coming back to an old, state-owned, undeveloped farm property that boasted 1,000 acres of woods.
"I bought two sections, about 4 acres at the time. It had a spring, a big creek and a smaller creek. I knew this is what I wanted," he said, noting he designed and hired contractors to build his expansive Tudor-style home.
He had built a beautiful matching two-story playhouse for his son and daughter in the yard shortly after he moved in and, about 25 years ago, created a teardrop waterfall feature with a large koi pond, once holding 25 fish that has since retained seven large koi. However, crafting his backyard garden took time and a lot of trial and error.
"I had to learn everything on this and failed on I don't know how many of thousands of dollars of plants. It was a lot of bad stuff I had to deal with, but I kept at it," he said with a laugh. "Jefferson City is mostly stone, rock and clay. I had to put in a lot of amendments to supplement. I also brought in tons of compost, starting my own compost about 30 years ago. After years of weeding and all the dead plants, it is a never-ending supply of compost now."
Jecman didn't rush his creativity and his gardening skills. He took one section at a time, and when he got it going well enough, he would move forward to the next.
"I didn't plan it all. I did one section I could do in a year, and then I would start another one," he added.
His front yard is filled with a variety of his favorite flowers in gorgeous colorful arrangements and strategically placed and picked that deal best in its ample daily sun. In the back, he has enjoyed mixing one of his favorite plants - the Japanese red maple - with a variety of healthy hostas, liverwort, hydrangea and flowering plants that elegantly add but don't overwhelm his serene paths and woodland ambiance.
"Your soil is super important. The English usually take theirs down to 2 feet and I only went a foot, remixing some of that dirt with my own compost. I do add amendments about every other year. People ask, 'How do you get your hostas so big?' I fertilize them every other year," he said. "Picking the right spots is critical. Some of them take the morning sun well where others don't. You have to deer proof things. To keep it looking nice I could work on it six days a week."
His growing, expansive garden now showcases his years of hard work and mostly hand-built features, including four bridges that span over the koi pond, two rock bedded reeks and a dry creek bed. The final large covered bridge that leads to the back of the property, in which he built six years ago that leads to an ongoing project that is yet another labor of love: a 300-plus-square-foot, hand-cut stone building.
While teaching in England and Scotland, he admired the 500- to 600-year-old hand-cut stone houses, cathedrals and structures that adorned much of the cities he frequented there. He decided he wanted to build one of them in his backyard.
"Every rock is cut with a chisel and a hammer. I have thousands of them done. I should be able to finish it by this fall if I can stay with it," he said with a laugh. "It will have Tudor-style trim. I went to an Amish settlement and got all of this oak trim. Eventually this will have a garden that goes back up to the woods with a few pathways around it, too. I'll also include pavers and some of the same Victorian era fence posts I have throughout the garden."
Jecman interjects his humor into his garden with a personalized, handmade wooden "sheriff" that watches out for couples sneaking away into a scenic corner of his garden to steal kisses. His whimsical, artistic expression also gives his family, friends and guests delight in the uniquely crafted iron décor that greets them, including a dragonfly, frogs and what his grandchildren call "chicken dinosaur."
Jecman said he'll probably do one more Bittersweet Garden Tour after finishing his stone shed and final garden space. For now, he revels in drinking a glass of wine from a chair in his favorite garden spot that is centered perfectly in the oasis. It allows him to soak up the tranquility and beauty of his many years of now award-winning hard work.
"In England when people retire they all go to gardening. You see these incredible gardens. I said, 'I want to do that,'" he said. "Somehow you get a passion for the garden. People have told me that before, and I didn't get it until I started doing it. It is a lot of work, but I love it."
See more photos from Jecman's garden at newstribune.com.