Photography Andrea Rugg
When Bonnie and Wayne Kelly put up their house and planted their gardens in Minnestrista, they did so in a forest they made. Most people do it the other way around: build or buy a house and plant a few trees, but not this couple.
In late summer 2010, they bought an 11-acre property west of Lake Minnetonka. The next spring they snatched up the adjoining 10-acre plot, giving them a whole 21 acres to work with. “We started planting trees right away, hundreds of trees,” Wayne Kelly explains.
First they planted the oak and birch trees, followed by maples, and then came the conifers—Austrian and Scotch pines, Norway spruce, and Larch. “I said, let’s just eyeball it and plant them where we want them, not in straight rows,” Kelly says. And so the Kellys created a forest with their very own hands.
In 2019, the Kellys found room to plant a house, too. They chose a spot on a hill in the center of the property. “It has a nice view of the land and the ponds, and we are still adding trees,” he explains. “We wanted to come outside and not see any houses, to feel like we’re out in the wilderness.”
Then they developed the gardens around the house. “I just enjoy getting down in the dirt and working with my hands. It’s my form of exercise,” Kelly says. “You dig holes all day, it’s quite a workout.”
Flowering shrubs and plants dominate the landscape, and there is no grass in the front of the house. “We have steps and terraces and lots of flowers and shrubs. It’s not well organized or manicured. It’s natural looking, eclectic. And we love the color,” Kelly says.
With a 20-by-40-foot greenhouse on the property, Kelly can work year-round, collecting seeds from his favorite plants—marigolds, zinnias, and more. In front of the greenhouse, Kelly added raised beds for vegetables, plus another garden “way out back” for raspberries and asparagus, pumpkins and squash—the kinds of produce that need a lot of space.
He also collects miniature conifers. “Along the driveway, I dug up the hillside, hauled some black dirt in there to embellish the soil, and planted a bunch of miniature conifers,” he says. “I was born and raised on the farm—this is in my blood.”
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