Magic and mischief Visitors to Troll Knoll need walking shoes and a sense of humor The Sacramento Bee

John Morris sometimes greets visitors to his Penn Valley garden dressed as a troll green shorts leather boots black top hat black vest white tuxedo shirt and a walking stick topped with a feather duster. He looks at you with intensely blue eyes and in a quiet voice tinged with a gentle Southern Mississippi accent he weaves a fanciful tale about gremlins and trolls making mischief in the garden. The wonderful witch of the west you see turned the gremlins to stone though if you accidentally kick one they still can hurt you and the trolls demand coins for crossing the bridges. He describes the escapades of the Western rinkydinks that inhabit the property corner. They hide behind rocks and trip you as you go down the paths he says. People see this old fool and have no idea that s going to happen Morris says. At first they re a little quiet but it becomes an icebreaker after they get it. Welcome to Troll Knoll. It s a acre garden perched on a hillside elevation feet. A carefully ! orchestrated yet carefree ramble it s a sanctuary Morris says and his home is inside it. We never intended to have a home with a garden. We intended this be a home in the garden a fanciful place and what I get to do here is anything that strikes my imagination. Morris and his wife Ann bought the property years ago five years after the er fire scorched the area. Charred remains of massive pines stood gaunt over the blackened landscape. They removed hundreds of dead trees. The property was rich with vistas. In fact there are more than spots in the garden where you can see the Feather Yuba and Sacramento rivers the Sierra Buttes the Coast Range Lassen Peak the Tahoe Rim or the Siskiyous. Wide formal paths meander up to the house the air heavy with the scent of rosemary and lavender. A long sward of strappy leaved kniphofia sends up tall spires topped with orange and yellow flowers. Beautiful visitors say. Stunning. But there s more. Morris leads guests down a narrow path throu! gh a grove of oaks and cautions that the trees have eyes. It takes a minute or two to spot them. By the time the visit is over guests will have toured a vineyard maze a ghost town called Annsville with a mine temperance hall and shops ruins complete with Roman style balustrades and statues several ponds an abandoned racetrack a frog dance stage flowery meadows a vegetable garden a swamp dinosaurs a golf course no grass only sand traps and a trailer park called Pinky s that sports three Airstream trailers and plenty of pink flamingos. Along the back of the U shaped house is the high heel walk with formal clipped plantings. Morris paved the paths so Ann could take an evening stroll while still dressed in her business clothes. Add concrete vegetables to the list a spirit house and melons growing in beds perched atop arbors. The garden contains more than two miles of paths miles of irrigation pipe roses daylilies trees types of waterlilies types of fruit trees including citrus trees and apple trees and drip irrigation heads. A system of French dra! ins and ponds recovers runoff. Water for the sprinkler system is only available April through October. The rest of the year the garden has to rely on Mother Nature s whims to survive. Best of all the house and garden are solar powered. Despite the mammoth scale of the garden Morris estimates he uses fewer than different types of plants all of them commonly planted and commonly available. The secret he says is in the way they re arranged. I take easy to maintain common plants that would be boring by themselves and put them together in interesting combinations. I have a drawing on my wall using white and yellow daisies blue agapanthus gray dusty miller and blue salvia in front of ornamental grasses. Well all of those are very common. I ve made mistakes but I ve been more surprised at how things can fit together. He has a library of digital photos. Morris gets ideas and solves problems in the garden by looking at the photos in the evening. I have a good time imagining things i! n the garden that would be beautiful to look at and I try to build them. His most recent project an anthill. Dubbed The Power of Two it consists of two concrete and steel ants about feet long working together. Look past the ants though and you ll see hundreds of smaller ants crawling over the hill almost feet long. People don t expect that he says. He recently spent a day weeding his ponds and dividing waterlilies. It was really hot and I was able to take every lily pad leaf and decide whether to keep it. The fish would come up and I d feed them bugs off the lily pads. How can you explain being in a fly fishing floaty in the middle of a pond feeding your fish If someone walks by they d think you re totally nuts. The pond looked like a Monet painting when I finished so how do I complain about a life like that He also tells of friends who brought their granddaughter to visit. He met them at the entrance dressed as a troll. The little girl got a tour of the garden from a real troll. You see it s not the gardening that s so significant it s the th! ings that happen in it like the little girl visiting. It s things like getting a peach pie out of my peaches. About the writer Call The Bee s Pat Rubin . Where some people might have garden gnomes John Morris has room for a dinosaur or two as he proves in this photo self portrait. JOHN MORRIS Click on photo to enlarge A signpost hints at the many whimsical destinations along the trails of Troll Knoll. JOHN MORRIS Click on photo to enlarge John Morris weeds his ponds and divides his waterlilies by hand. A system of ponds and French drains collects runoff. JOHN MORRIS Click on photo to enlarge The house at Troll Knoll was always intended to be integral to the gardens says its owner. Although the plants are common they often are arranged in surprising ways. JOHN MORRIS Click on photo to enlarge John and Ann Morris like to punctuate their plantings with little treasures like this statue of a goddess. LEZLIE STERLING lsterlingsacbee.com Click on photo to enlarge Unique content e! xceptional value. SUBSCRIBE NOW Most Popular More Stories in Home and Garden Magic and mischief Visitors to Troll Knoll need walking shoes and a sense of humor Readers harvest a bumper crop of garden poetry Stamps Pat Rubin Top Jobs View All Top Jobs Buy Used Cars Dealer and private party ads Make Model Price Range to No Max Search within All miles of ZIP Search used Advanced Search Older News Sports Business Politics Opinion Entertainment Living Here Travel Blogs Cars Homes Jobs Classifieds Shopping Privacy Policy Terms of Use Site Map Advertise Guide to The Bee Bee Jobs FAQs RSS Contact Us e edition Subscribe Manage Your Subscription E newsletters Sacbeemail Archives sacbee.com Sacramento.com Capitol Alert SacMomsClub.com SacPaws.com SacWineRegion.com Copyright The Sacramento Bee Q St.P.O

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