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© William P. Wright, Sharon Cohoon / Sunset

© William P. Wright, Sharon Cohoon / Sunset

© William P. Wright, Sharon Cohoon / Sunset

© William P. Wright, Sharon Cohoon / Sunset

© William P. Wright, Sharon Cohoon / Sunset

© William P. Wright, Sharon Cohoon / Sunset
By Sunset
See how one woman used recycled materials and hunted down bargains to create a personal backyard getaway.
Lisa Phipps has a knack for using found materials in fresh ways.
She started recycling in earnest when she moved to a small farmhouse in Port Orchard, Wash. Like Virginia Woolf, Phipps wanted a room of her own. Money was tight, so she and her husband, Frank, used salvaged materials to build a shed.
The more you recycle, the more the ideas flow, Phipps says. “You just have to loosen up and have fun.”
Bargain door
Phipps got hers from a church that was being torn down. “It cost me all of $5,” she says. The shutters, shelf bracket and candelabra on the shelf were all garage-sale finds.
Color
The cottage’s shocking chartreuse color was one of those girlfriend-plus-wine inspirations, and it proved to be one of Phipps’ best decisions. Like a parrot in the jungle, the shed seems to recede in the garden because of its vivid hue. “From most angles,” she says, “it disappears into the trees.”
Ultrablue hydrangeas look good against the chartreuse cottage. They started as a single cutting from a friend’s garden.
Phipps salvaged several truckloads from various places. She chiseled the old mortar off each brick before using it in her garden.
Phipps turned the trough for horses she once owned into a water garden. Tucked among ferns and edged with baby’s tears, it contains water iris.
An awkward spot where several paths intersect displays some of Phipps’s favorite finds, including a red glass slipper, a porcelain doll’s head and a Victorian boot hook. The pieces were set into wet concrete.