Here is a city garden with room -- and rooms. It has space to make a garden of many plants and many parts -- three garden spaces within the whole.

Rheta and Perry Mogus have made a marvellous garden a few blocks from the lake in south Burlington. It has been a part of Hamilton Spectator Open Garden Week since 2001 and it will open again Tuesday. (Two years ago, after a photo of the Mogus garden was published, more than 500 visitors poured through the garden in two days.)

They moved into the McIntosh Place house in 1992. "But I really didn't start gardening until 2000," Rheta says.

They've accomplished a lot in eight years. The property is 110 feet wide, with lots of sun in some areas and dappled or deep shade in others. That has allowed them to create sun-loving perennial borders at one side, a cool woodland on the other and a gentle transition zone in between.

A pond and waterfall provide a focal point in the middle of the garden, and flagstone paths tie it all together.

One of Rheta's favourite plants thrives in a side garden: a variegated fallopia japonica with soft yellow-green and cream leaves. It catches the light, brightening even a shady spot. The unusual plant has hollow stems like bamboo, grows two metres high by the end of June and dies back every winter.

Rheta loves unusual plants, rare ones, and plants with great lines or colour. She loves foliage as much -- sometimes more -- than flowers.

Coreopsis Moonbeam, lady's mantle, sundrops (oenothera), peonies, cranesbill geranium and other perennials are in front of a backdrop of large ostrich ferns, which wouldn't be out of place in a primeval jungle.

Paths here are planted with creeping thyme that creates a purple carpet in spring and smells wonderful throughout the season.

Shrubs and small trees provide garden architecture and a weeping purple beech is her favourite.

"I love its lines, and it's a wonderful red in the fall."

In the woodland garden, azaleas and rhododendrons flower profusely in spring. A small bed is planted with a charming combination of dwarf hosta, coleus, lady's mantle and astilbe. A bed around a large linden tree has a mix of heuchera, Japanese painted fern and ornamental grasses. A dramatic and unusual upright hosta called Praying Hands draws the eye.

A corner bed is planted with clumps of ornamental onion, whose spiky stems complement ornamental grasses and spiderwort's spiky leaves topped with striking blue-purple flowers.

On the south side of the house is a Japanese-themed garden with a trickling fountain pond, statuary and a temple lantern, pruned mugho pines and a mix of thyme, angelica and painted ferns that Rheta says do mystifyingly well despite intense sun and heat.

There's more -- including more than 30 containers and a bank of Annabelle hydrangea in the front.

Rheta and Perry's garden, at 4107 McIntosh Pl., is open July 1, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Rob Howard lives and gardens in Hamilton. Chat with him about Hamilton Spectator Open Garden Week on Room To Grow, Hamilton's only call-in gardening show, 9 to 11 a.m. Saturdays on AM900 CHML.