While flowers play a part, Harriet Husemann's expansive four-season garden of nuances is designed to please all five senses with the form, texture, color and arrangement of woody structure and foliage.

Harriet, who wrote a garden column for the Lewiston Tribune before me, is well practiced in horticulture. Her two-acre garden, where she moved in 1983, is what I'd call "controlled natural." Curving areas of lawn and mulched beds are part of woodland garden rooms, alcoves and nooks that invite you in. A sunny dryland section named the "the Back 40" provides striking contrast.

She uses rocks and driftwood to accent the grasses, huge trees, shrubs, and ground covers, often Idaho natives. A regal 60-foot sycamore presides in the front garden and an equally large grand fir soars in the back.

This fir is her attention-getting "great outdoor swamp cooler." She mounted a hose with a sprinkler near the tree top and turns the water on to rain through the branches in a fine mist that fills the air with a heavenly Christmas tree aroma and coolness.

Low-maintenance strategies reign in Harriet's garden. Coarse bark mulch conserves water, helps control weeds and minimizes the need for plant dropping pickup. Roundup, one of the few chemicals she uses, is the tool of choice for lawn edging.

She tries hard to like what occurs naturally, such as wild violets in the lawn, but bindweed strains even her tolerance. With the help of Virginia creeper, lichens, and sometimes mushrooms, she lets fallen trees and draping branches form their own sculptures. When a tree dies, she views it more as a "sun gap opportunity" than a loss. All volunteer plants are given consideration because they demonstrate self-sufficiency.

Harriet grows her higher maintenance plants near the house, and controls the automatic underground sprinkler system with an eye to rainfall and temperature. Her perennials are concentrated along Bark Avenue, as she calls her kitchen-window view. Small plantings of annual flowers and her mass-planted, long-blooming red valerian help keep this perennial area colorful throughout the summer.

She plants and prunes to let backlighting and side lighting enhance the shapes, textures, sizes and colors of her foliage garden. This and other subtle approaches suggest you walk slowly through it. Listen to the bird song, chirping crickets and the sound of wind in the pines. Feel the papery river birch bark and smell the wonderful woods aroma. Look everywhere for detail and the play of light and shadow.

This garden is a senses-on adventure. Wear comfortable shoes and come prepared to experience it fully.