CLOCKWISE FROM
TOP: There’s a fun visual at
every level, from hanging
containers overhead to a
smiling gargoyle on the table
to a moon face peering up
from the walkway. A tall
graceful fairy fills in where an
evergreen’s dying branches
were limbed up. Hiding
among the balloon flowers is
the only boy statue in her
gardens, a cherub her
stepdad gave her.
“I started counting once and had thirty just on the patio. I
thought that was embarrassing so I stopped counting,” she says.
“If I see something good on sale, I’ll find a spot for it. I tend to
find something and then dig out a new area to highlight it.”
Malinowski refuses to choose
any favorite plants. “That’s like
asking me to name a favorite
child,” she says.
Late-May through June is her
busy time when she spends every
spare minute after work and every
weekend planting annuals and
dividing perennials. By Fourth of
July, she considers herself done
and can sit back and enjoy her gar-
dens, her only tasks watering, pull-
ing a stray weed and deadheading.
Malinowski’s statuary obsession
began when she saw a gargoyle at
King Richard’s Faire and had to
have one for herself.
“I’ve always liked that kind of
gothic architecture and Celtic vibe and I just started collecting
more and more,” she says.
She sought them out to fill shady areas and now buys one or two
new ones a year, many from the Design Toscano catalog as well as
local shops. There’s the classic winged sentinel guarding the arbored
entrance to the backyard, whimsical fairies playing flutes in the
crook of a tree and a laughing dragon on her patio, which she calls
her office.
More gargoyles on every fencepost preside over the fruit and
vegetable garden, which sprouts tomatoes, peppers, purple beans,
lettuce, peas, kale, spinach and eggplant.
“But I look for different varieties that you can’t buy in the gro-
cery store,” she says.
The gargoyles should have warded off pesky ground-
hogs who took up residence next door to the vege-
tables, digging huge tunnels and instigating an epic three-year
standoff.
“We did everything: double fences, sonic noise, filled in holes,
flooded tunnels,” she says. “The deer just nibble a bit and move on,
but the groundhogs eat right down to the nub. They have no man-
ners at all; they don’t think about sharing, they just annihilate
everything.”
Last year, some foxes and coyotes moved into the neighbor-
hood and Malinowski thinks that may have taken care of the
groundhogs.
“I don’t want to say I conquered them because I don’t think I’m
in charge of it,” she says. >>
RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY
l MARCH 2020 67