Barbara Lawlor, Eldora. Pearly McGoldrick, 8, chewed on piece of crunchy, bright green, freshly-picked-by-her-own-hands Romaine lettuce. She and her sister Ellie, 10, and their mom Kate live near the end of the Town of Eldora, and were visiting Laura Fisher who lives at the end, the last house before the road to Hessie and the Fourth of July trailheads.

It a place where civilization meets wilderness, and the place where Laura and Mark Fisher have created one of the area’s most prolific and edible mountain gardens. All it took was tons of composted horse manure, experimentation, and years of tilling, fertilizing, weeding, hauling rocks, and discouraging vegan critters.

The produce yield is huge and Laura has found a perfect way to make sure it all gets consumed. Distribution of the bounty has become a summertime passion, especially a July/August goal for the green-thumbed couple.

Named Windspiration after Eldora’s typical weather pattern, the garden began decades ago on the East Coast and was transplanted into the granite-pine-needled soil of the Rocky Mountains. Amazingly, it took.

Laura is from Massachusetts, from a long line of New England gardeners who took food to the Quincy Market in Boston, now a posh marketplace.

“My ancestors came here in 1634 and grew apples and peaches and vegetables and made it a business. I have the genes. My grandmother grew perennials and belonged to flower clubs,” says Laura.

In 1978, Laura came to Colorado to attend college and ski, and she stayed. In Boulder, in 1981, she started her first Boulder garden. Seeking a new place to live, she ended up at a house in Boulder Canyon, at the end of the bike path. As she approached the people who lived in the house, one of them told his friends, “Let her move in, maybe I’ll marry her.” And he did.

It was the start of a partnership of many gardens. She called her first garden the Winter Palace because no sunshine reached through the canyon shadows, but it was “successful enough for a 21-year-old girl.”

The couple lived in Eldorado Springs and then Old Town Lafayette, and discovered that rabbits liked their vegetable garden. On South Boulder Road, they created a large vegetable garden that was so successful they had too much of everything, and Laura said she cut back on the planting.

“It was better to feel guilty one day for not growing something than growing too much and not being able to use it.”

Later on, she took part in a community garden, but once again found she didn’t have enough time to can and freeze abundant vegetables. During these many growing times, Mark created the gardens and rototilled them. Whether or not Laura picked and put up the produce was up to her.

The Fishers owned and operated a plastic injection molding company that was getting busy. They had grown tired of flatland traffic and decided that they wanted to run the business from their home. They began the quest for land with outbuildings for production and a mother-in-law dwelling.

On a drive into the mountains they checked out a place at the end of Eldora where the snow plow left a huge berm on the road beyond the property. As they pulled up, a line of cars waited for the chance to turn around and head back to maintained roads. Forget that. They continued the search.

Later, when they learned the price had come down, they went to take another look. What convinced the Fishers to purchase the property was the fact that the ceiling was high enough for their antique grandfather clock, and basically, the place had everything they needed for a home, business, and, of course, the garden.

Laura also says that her father’s icon was a fox and when they went to look at the property again, there was a fox sitting in the yard. “What’s wrong with you?” her father asked. “Buy it.”  She got the message and they bought it, which has turned to be the right thing to do.

They moved into the Eldora house in August of 1997.

At that time the property was an oxeye daisy field. The foliage had been munched down to nothing. Previously owned by Dr. Mizer, the yard had boasted rose bushes, long gone. But then, on the rock walls of the driveway, sedum, periwinkle, and vinca poked their faces through the cracks and the legendary perennial garden was born.

Mark gathered and stacked rocks and filled the beds with composted horse manure from wherever he could get it. They knew raised beds were the antidote to the rock-filled mountain soil. He built a heart bed and even a fish bed, with huge rocks for the cornerstones.

Their neighbor, John Brocklehurst, the original Eldora master gardener, showed up with a wheelbarrow full of perennials for his new neighbors.

“I put the plants willy nilly in the ground. I put in a bunch of bleeding hearts, my mom’s favorite flower, and I put in plants that a guy in Boulder would give me, saying ‘Try this.’” It became a process of elimination. Some took, some didn’t. To Laura it was a miracle when a cutting from a plant anchored its roots and thrived.

She remembers hauling dirt out from under a crawl space in a house in Old Town, and then visiting local stables to get the soil she needed. She says her neighbor Brock has been stealing manure from her for years. A few years back she had to call the Nederland Police Chief, Ken Robinson, to come out and handcuff the culprit. That was good for a few laughs.

Time was always a factor. Once the business got settled in to its new location, orders escalated and some of the work was turned over to Tesco in Rollinsville.

Slowly, the perennial gardens evolved and then the vegetables became the next project. In 2009, the Nederland Fire Protection District put in an underground cistern at the edge of the property. Since then, the Fishers have added soil and manure, building up a nutrient-rich, vegetable-loving three-foot-deep base.

This summer is the first time they rototilled. When they planted the seeds they threw in extras to keep the gophers happy. Several kinds of lettuce, spinach, kale, beans, peas, carrots, Jerusalem artichokes, arugula, and bushes of potato plants now cover the vegetable beds.

Laura has been picking the vegetables for about a month. The more she picks, the more they grow. Twice a week she loads up three big Cosco flats and brings the greens to the Nederland Food Pantry. So far, everything is coming up hardy and large and healthy.

“You get frustrated sometimes. Last year, the gophers ate all the beans. Old seeds will reduce germinating. This year I am experimenting with tomatoes and I can’t believe it but I am now actually growing tomatoes outside in Eldora.”

Laura planted the seedlings she got from a Lyons library fundraiser in big black pots and then buried the pots in straw to protect moisture levels and root burning from heat. Green tomatoes are in abundance, ready for the sun to ripen them. A multitude of yellow blossoms promise that many more are on the way.

If an early frost hits, Laura can dig out the pots and bring them inside. It all follows the gardening philosophy of “Try it and see what happens.” Every growing season there are small miracles that happen in dirt.

Years ago Laura planted a yellow rose bush that never bloomed until the summer her mother died.

On Sunday, the McGoldrick girls bagged their fresh organic salads and thanked Laura for not just the food, but also for the experience of kneeling down on the soft, moist soil and cutting greens fresh as the moment.

Pearly said, “I love this. It is really fun and I don’t like any kind of spinach except this spinach.”