Recycle, Reuse, Relax: Woman Turns 104-Year-Old Summer Kitchen Into Garden Retreat

Helen Pellack-Johnson calls her backyard retreat her peace garden because people would have to call her on her cell phone to find her.

"Nobody would know I was back here," she said, chuckling.

Pellack-Johnson and her husband bought their 104-year-old property in 2006 and started with interior updates. They moved to yard improvements the following summer.

"It was all overgrown with trees and bushes and weeds," Pellack-Johnson said. Her husband wanted to attack it with a chain saw, but Pellack-Johnson stopped him, opting instead to figure out exactly what was underneath.

Slowly, bit by bit, the couple cut back the overgrowth and discovered a hidden glade next to the old potting shed, or what they thought was a potting shed.

"We just stored our tools and gardening equipment in here," Pellack-Johnson said, gesturing to her charmingly transformed cottage.

It wasn't until the summer of 2010 when she was asked to be on the garden walk that she decided to clean up the potting shed. Talking to a neighbor, Pellack-Johnson discovered that the little brick building had been used as a summer kitchen by the original owners.

"They would come back here and sleep out here and eat out here in the summer," she said.

Over the years, though, someone had boarded up the windows--inside and out--and let it be overtaken by the weeds and vines in the yard. When Pellack-Johnson finally set to work, she uncovered the windows, swept the floors, washed the walls and discovered the most marvelous garden treasure, which fit right in with the peace garden she'd been creating over the past three years right outside the cottage's walls.

Clearly a big believer in giving old things new life, Pellack-Johnson said that in addition to revitalizing her yard, she repurposes old objects (read: other people's discards) for her outdoor retreat. Sometimes she finds them herself, like her potting table that came from a neighbor's driveway on garbage night. Sometimes things find her, like an antique chair and quilt given to her for her garden house and hammock by a neighbor who was moving away. Even her sister's hosta plants found a new home with Pellack-Johnson when her sister relocated and couldn't take them with. Either way, she's delighted to make them her own.

"I can find a use for anything," she said.

And she loves it when people share her enjoyment of her continually evolving gardens, even strangers. Pellack-Johnson noted that downtown Frankfort is a big tourist draw, especially on Sunday afternoons, and she said that she routinely has people wander through the grassy easement along her carriage house garage and sit under her arbor, which she placed invitingly along that path.

"One of the things someone wrote about our yard is that you can find a place to sit anywhere, and I did that purposefully. It makes people feel welcome. It's inviting," she said.

The peace garden is at the corner of Utah and Walnut streets in downtown Frankfort.

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