Tennis court transforms to Japanese garden on EasyLiving Front Range Colorado

A thoughtfully designed Japanese meditation garden now replaces the crumbly tennis court at Deb Carney’s Lookout Mountain home.

Carefully picking her way along the garden’s stepping-stones, Carney points out the natural features, explaining their symbolism.

“That’s the dragon, one of my favorites,” she says of a rock that spills water to the stream below. “For me the dragon symbolizes both crisis and opportunity.” Crisis because of the Lookout Mountain TV tower issue that Carney, a lawyer, has worked on for years – and opportunity because, in the process, she came to know her neighbors better.

Resuming the garden tour, she skirts the pea gravel raked to resemble ocean waves. In the middle, “whale rock” bears an uncanny resemblance to a humpback, one of Carney’s favorite creatures.

Nearby is “T J’s throne” – named for her lawyer husband – a surprisingly comfortable chair-like rock with a view upstream.

Good and evil is depicted in one corner of the garden. Here, a dwarf apple tree spreads out near a large white, sparkly boulder (good) and smaller black rock.

A visitor can’t help but wonder how this tennis court-turned-Japanese garden came into being.

Actually, there were several reasons. Carney gave tennis up after severely breaking an ankle. Her father, a legendary Kansas trial lawyer whom she was close to, died in 2002. “And, I felt a bitterness growing in my heart” over the tower issue.

“I needed to do something, and this garden project quieted my mind,” she says.

Her mother, who created a Japanese garden of her own years ago, drew the design. Carney perused a shelf full of books on the subject. Then last July, when it was time to get down to work, her son Ross, and neighbor Paul Kalkwarf, began ripping up the tennis
court.

Since then, a variety of trees, including crabapple, cherry and spruce, have been planted. Japanese irises will soon take root in the bog garden, near the “red rocks” section where Colorado Rose rocks angle upward like formations along the Front Range.

“The red rocks always lift my spirits and remind me of the power and awe in nature,” Carney says with a contented smile.

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