My friend Mary Ann’s garden is a little slice of heaven that just happened to drop to earth on a bluff overlooking Boise, Idaho. Mary Ann approaches gardening-and well, pretty much everything-with gusto and it shows. Feathery ornamental grasses line a plunge pool, espaliered apples disguise a regular old wall, and edibles and ornamentals intermingle in the wide garden beds that encircle her gorgeous mid-century home.

It’s a garden that is easy to admire and envy, mainly because it doesn’t always follow the rules. There is no segregation here, where edibles are confined to the back and ornamentals put on a show up front.

In a bed besides the driveway, Mary Ann enclosed ‘Fall Gold’ raspberries within a gorgeous steel frame and then planted a big and bold Joe Pye Weed behind them. Nearby ‘Sun Gold’ and ‘Pink Thai’ tomatoes rub shoulders with Clematis tangutica and Miscanthus sinensis ‘Gracillimus’. Out in the back, newly planted espaliered pear trees (six varieties on each tree!) are trained along a rustic steel fence.

Mary Ann looks at her garden as a work in progress. This year she ripped out a mature ornamental bed because the grasses growing in it blocked her view. Rather than look at this as a design failure, Mary Ann saw it as an opportunity to try something new. She recognizes that gardens constantly evolve and are never truly finished. A lesson that I’m still learning. I often procrastinate about putting in new beds, designing our patio, or installing a trellis because I suffer from design phobia–I’m terrified that I’ll plant or build something and it will look bad. But what Mary Ann has taught me is that you might not always get it right, and that is totally okay. I’m also learning that by mixing up plants that scare me (ornamentals) with ones I love (edibles) I can create a changing palette that will only get better with time.

To see more of Mary Ann’s garden and read about her gardening exploits, check out her blog Idaho Gardener. It is always a fun read!