Between the mall and the mills in northeast Hamilton, Barry and Wendy Clemmens have made a garden that is all about imagination and creativity.

They've used the street side of the property to create a lovely garden around a flowering crabapple tree.

But that gives no clue to the riot of colour and movement in the back.

Almost 50 whirligigs move in the breeze, and dozens of gazing balls, weather vanes, windmills, statues, birdbaths and fountains fill the yard. Re-purposed objects include a fire-extinguisher water fountain and an old canister vacuum cleaner planted with perennial columbine.

"When there's a good breeze, all the whirligigs are moving. It's something to see," Barry says.

Wendy was born and raised in Hamilton, he in Gravenhurst, and they met working at an IGA grocery store.

They bought the McAnulty Boulevard house 20 years ago, and the garden has been just about that long in the making.

They've packed a lot into a little space. The garden is built around a collection of bird feeders that attract a wide range of birds, from woodpeckers, jays and red-winged blackbirds to much less welcome pigeons.

Barry and Wendy have opened their garden each of the past five years for Hamilton Spectator Open Garden Week, welcoming about 100 visitors each time. They book their holidays around the event so they can open their garden and, this year for the first time, visit others.

It's easy to be so distracted by all the man-made objects that a visitor doesn't at first notice the wide range of perennials, annuals, vines, tender houseplants and tropicals. But the two are serious gardeners, looking for unusual plants and using them carefully and strategically to make the most of their small inner-city property.

"We like to get out and boogie around and pick things up for the garden," Wendy says.

Clematis climb almost a dozen trellises, and shrubs and small trees provide interest, shade and perches for the hundreds of birds that flock to the feeders.

A wide mix of plants is in beds and containers.

Wendy put in two new clematis this year to replace a yellow variety that threatened to take over and a quince was replaced by an everblooming variety of lilac she read about.

"We had a trumpet vine, too, and it took over," she says. "This yard is too small for that. I yanked it out."

She knows her plants and doesn't have time or space for short-season bloomers. Rhododendron, for example, just don't have a long enough show to warrant space in their small garden. She likes hydrangea, on the other hand, because they flower for so long and so reliably.

Their favourite plants include flowering maple (abutilon), hardy and tender hibiscus, a hard-to-find salvia with vivid blue flowers emerging from deep black hoods.

The garden is also a summer home to several unusual plants, such as Tiny Mice cuphea with flowers resembling mouse heads; shrimp plant, a tropical house plant with overlapping bracts that look like jumbo shrimp; and somona, a tender variety of euphorbia with small vivid red flowers.

"It's a busy, whimsical garden," Barry says. "On a breezy day, everything is moving, and the birds are all here. It's nice to just sit and enjoy it."

"It was just an ugly little garden with nothing in it," Wendy says. "I didn't want a stupid little patch of grass so I played with it. I'm still playing."

Rob Howard lives and gardens in Hamilton. Talk about gardening with him on Room To Grow, Saturdays 9 to 11 a.m. on AM900CHML. Gardenwriter@gmail.com