Category Archives: Private Gardens

A Visit to Andrew Bunting’s Belvidere

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During my September Garden Bloggers’ Fling in the Philadelphia area, my favourite small garden was Andrew Bunting’s delightful property in Swarthmore. Perhaps that’s no surprise, given that the owner is the Vice-President of Horticulture with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Founded in 1827, the PHS is the oldest horticultural society in the U.S., responsible for the annual Philadelphia Flower Show as well as a host of endeavors including 120 community gardens; maintenance of public landscapes in the city and suburbs including museums, the art gallery and public squares; street tree programs; the 28-acre estate garden at Meadowbrook Farm; Landcare, in which vacant city lots are turned from blighted properties to neighbourhood parks; pop-up ephemeral gardens; and a program to train former convicts to be gardeners.

Since buying the house on its one-third acre in 1999, this garden is where Andrew has experimented with an eclectic roster of plants and an evolving approach to design – in fact, five redesigns in his time there. I especially loved seeing his home through the tall, wispy wands of ‘Skyracer’ purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea), a grass that shines in my own garden in autumn. Beyond is a gravel garden bisected by a broad flagstone walk with a small patch of lawn that creates a nice balance of negative space, as well as lavenders and verbascums and other drought-tolerant plants, many native. A stone trough acts as a birdbath and a terracotta urn features a chartreuse explosion of colocasia (likely ‘Maui Gold’).

Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii) with its needle-like leaves is prominent in the front garden; its blue flowers are attractive in spring but its brilliant gold fall color gives it long-season appeal. Barely visible in the foliage is a wooden chair.  Originally white, the front door and window shutters were painted gray, picking up the colors of the flagstone.

Behind the amsonia is Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’ and, at left, willow-leaf spicebush (Lindera glauca var. salicifolia), which also has good autumn colour.

The vine around the door and on the house’s front wall is self-clinging Chinese silver-vein creeper (Parthenocissus henryana).  I love the mailbox and house numbers.

My colour-tuned eye picked up the echo between the red glasses indoors and the big caladium and chartreuse-and-red coleus in Andrew’s windowbox.

Our time was limited and there was so much to see, but I could have spent hours studying the gravel garden, including many native plants like giant coneflower (Rudbeckia maxima), below. Andrew’s influences around gravel include Beth Chatto’s garden in England, the Gravel Garden designed by Lisa Roper at Chanticleer (see my latest blog here) and Jeff Epping’s work at Olbrich Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin. The gravel is 1/2 inch granite but Andrew says it’s more like 1/4 inch.

Here is native wild quinine (Parthenium integrifolium).

And American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) with its vibrant violet fruit.

Andrew removed much of the original driveway beside the house which was too narrow for cars and turned it into a shady sideyard garden with a path leading to the old garage – which became a charming summerhouse. Those little purple flowers are Vernonia lettermannii ‘Iron Butterfly’, a good fall bloomer and, incidentally, a Pennsylvania Horticultural Society 2023 Gold Medal Plant Winner!

Turning the corner at the back of the house, I saw more evidence of a plantsman’s wonderland with assorted tropicals in pots and a potting bench topped by colourful annuals.

Andrew was holding court in the back garden, so I asked him to pose. His own history in horticulture is very deep. Even at a young age, he knew a career in gardening was in his future – and it relates to the name of his own garden. As he has written in an essay about becoming a gardener, “My grandfather farmed in southeastern Nebraska, just outside a little town called Belvidere. I loved those couple of weeks on the farm every summer. Something about that agrarian lifestyle resonated with me then, and still does today. I loved the crops in the field, my grandmother’s vegetable garden, and the smell of hay.” He did internships at the Morton Arboretum, Fairchild Tropical Garden and the Scott Arboretum, where he worked in the late 1980s for three years.  In 1990 he visited more than a hundred gardens in England, meeting Rosemary Verey, Beth Chatto, Christopher Lloyd and working for a while at Penelope Hobhouse’s  Tintinhull. That autumn, he travelled to New Zealand and worked for a designer for 3 months. Returning to Pennsylvania, he got a part-time position at Chanticleer as it was becoming a public garden, working there for 18 months while starting his own landscape business on the side. In 1993, he became curator of the Scott arboretum at Swarthmore College and stayed there for 22 years, until becoming Assistant Director and Director of Plant Collections at Chicago Botanic Garden in 2015.  

I saw Andrew during a garden symposium in Chicago in 2018, below, when he spoke about how he directed the content and curation of CBG’s permanent plant collection. Next, a job offer at the Atlanta Botanic Garden arose and he became Vice-President of Horticulture and Plant Collections at Atlanta Botanic Garden, giving him the chance to grow broad-leaved plants. Then the opportunity at Pennsylvania Horticultural Society opened up and he returned to Swarthmore and the abundance of public gardens that make the Philadelphia area “America’s Garden Capital”.  

When Andrew bought the house in 1999 the back yard was filled with a jungle of pokeweed. With the help of his landscape crew and a bobcat, he installed a 35 x 12 foot patio spanning the back of the house.  It’s the perfect setting for a lush ‘garden room’ created with pots of banana, canna and palms.  These tropicals get carried down to the cool, damp, cellar-like basement for winter through the entrance partially shown at left.

There are potted plants everywhere, many on vintage tables…..

…. and étageres.

Textural foliage combinations caught my eye, like this chartreuse sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas) with Euphorbia x martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’ euphorbia and a fancy-leaved pelargonium.

There are bromeliads here too, like Portea petropolitana.

Most chairs in the garden were built by Chanticleer’s Dan Benarcik – and can actually be ordered custom online as kits or fully assembled! Note that the granite gravel has been used here, which Andrew says is a less expensive solution than flagstone paving. At right, you can see the entrance to the covered part of the summerhouse, aka the old garage.

So many artful touches here, combining with the rich plant palette to create a beautiful outdoor living space.

Let’s take a peek into the summerhouse, where a comfy leather sofa awaits.  As Andrew once said in an online Masterclass chat with Noel Kingsbury and Annie Guilfoyle, many people in the Philadelphia area go to the New Jersey shore or the Poconos in summer, but he prefers his own garden – “less traffic and more access to gardening”.  And I can imagine sitting in here behind the screen doors during a summer thunderstorm, candles lit, perhaps with a little glass of something tasty.

The back of the summerhouse is more open to the elements and features the perfect stage set. I don’t know what the silvery Adonis mannequin was once wearing on his sculpted torso, but I’m willing to bet it was Ralph Lauren, now nicely accented with tillandsias and begonias.

Nearby are more colocasias and blue Salvia guaranitica.

I loved all the seating (still more Dan Benarcik chairs), this time on a shady patio with a dining table.

Sometimes the seating is more about atmosphere and lichen-rich patina than it is about an actual place to sit.

In a shady spot at the back of the garden is a naturalistic pond because… every garden needs a little water.

I was sad not to have time to take a peek behind the back fence into the neighbour’s yard, where there’s an Andrew-designed large, shared quadrangle vegetable garden, but it was late in the season for veggies anyway.  Mostly, I was happy that we were able to see this lovely garden in dry weather, since we were soon to find ourselves on the soaking end of Tropical Storm Ophelia.

Yews Farm – A Brilliant Marriage…. of Boxwood and Beans

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In the village of Martock (pop. 4800) in Somerset, UK, is a garden that represents a marital meeting of the minds. Yews Farm, and its beautiful farmhouse…..

…. with its small, north-facing front garden of tidy lawn and narrow shady border….

…. featuring foliage plants in elegant combinations…

… and soft shield fern (Polystichum setiferum)….

… doesn’t really prepare you for what you are about to see when you turn the corner. Here, separated by a tall hedge from the back of the garden, is a gravel courtyard filled with a jungle of plants grown for their bold forms and interesting foliage. Giant fennel (Ferula communis) grows cheek-and-jowl beside …..

…. Chinese rice-paper plant (Tetrapanax papyrifer) ……

….. with little surprises such as dragon lily (Dracunculus vulgaris) peeking out along the path.

Walk through the opening in the hedge to the expansive garden at the rear and you’ve entered a lush, green topiary wonderland with spirals and jelly-moulds sculpted from boxwood (Buxus sempervirens).

Look up and there is a very perky topiary terrier named Toto leading a leafy parade atop a hedge.

And just by chance, at that very moment, crossing Yew Farm’s charming terrace with its attractive tables and chairs and potted pelargoniums is the family’s non-topiary doppelgänger, a perky terrier.

Yews Farm is a 27-year collaboration between Fergus and Louise Dowding. When they acquired the 1-acre property with its farm outbuildings in 1996, it was agreed that they’d each get half the garden in which to do what they loved. For Fergus, that meant food-growing. For Louise, who had trained in landscape design at college and worked two years with the famous garden writer/designer Penelope Hobhouse in her garden at Bettiscombe, it would be her own style of ornamental gardening. Not for her the wavy “hose-pipe” border surrounding a vast lawn favoured by the previous owner. She tore out everything except an old pear tree, divided the garden area into four equal spaces, claimed two for herself and gave two to Fergus. While he promptly began growing Savoy cabbages, broccoli, peas and heritage Martock beans, Louise went for structure. Her borders featured numerous tiny boxwood plants which ultimately became a kind of magical sculpture garden, the topiaries necessitating an intense shearing each June to maintain their shape.

Like an abstract geometric painting, the topiaries form the background to the terrace. This is where Louise’s pelargonium collection and other conservatory plants spend summer, this one on a pretty wirework table….

…. and the heritage variety ‘Appleblossom Rosebud’ on a table nearby.

Introduced in 1870, this beautiful double geranium was beloved by Queen Victoria – or so the story goes. And who could blame her?

Louise’s borders are generally quiet in colour so as not to compete with the topiaries — the blues and purples of cranesbills, clematis and alliums enlivened here by the brilliant bronze hues of autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora).

Linaria purpurea ‘Canon Went’ and opium poppies (Papaver somniferum) are allowed to self-seed.

For Fergus, vegetable gardening is the reason to garden yet his spaces are beautiful, too. Since our visit is in the first half of an extraordinarily cool June, the squash and artichokes are still filling out…..

….and peas are still finding their legs on the pretty pea sticks.

An espaliered fruit tree occupies a neighbouring wall, and it’s clear that Louise has sneaked some foxgloves and poppies into this productive space with its topiary snails in the background.

For a North American, “cleft chestnut fencing” sounds like a quaint way to separate the ornamental part of the garden with its peonies and irises from the legacy farmyard beyond it.

The view below is back into the ornamental garden. I love that Yews Farm remains so well-rounded with a thoughtful sense of place that melds the lush urban garden with the hard-working agricultural past.

There’s a wildish meadow in the farmyard with oxeye daisies, potentilla and other self-seeding native wildflowers.

Hens do their bit for ecology, eating the weeds while delivering a bounty of fresh eggs as well.

A pair of pigs makes short work of garden waste while creating raw material for the compost pile.

Fergus is an organic gardener, so the compost bins are well-tended.

The neighbour’s cows sidle up to the farmyard fence to check out the tour group.

Garlic is set out to dry in airy crates.

Circling back towards the ornamental garden, I walk beside more old farm buildings and a charming profusion of self-seeded flowers growing in gravelly soil, including white licorice root (Ligusticum lucidum), yellow wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) and blue love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena). Though this looks naturally carefree, Louise manages the mix rigorously.

The ligusticum is an Ammi majus look-alike, but perennial and much tougher.

As we take our leave of this delightful garden, the newly-acquired ducks work up enough courage to draw close. As Louise wrote in an Instagram post: “Bought three enchanting White Campbell ducks to feast on the slugs and snails. They’ve done more damage than a 1000 Gastropods with their huge feet and bellies as wide as boats but a 1000 times more amusing“.

But the ducks, pigs and hens all find a home here in this charming Somerset landscape along with their owners, who have created an inspirational garden that celebrates all the gifts that nature offers to nourish both body and soul.

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I visited Yews Farm in June 2023 with Carolyn Mullet’s Carex Tours ‘New Gardens of England – Gardens of Resilience and Beauty’. You might also enjoy my blogs on Malverleys Garden and Dan Pearson’s wonderful Hillside.

Malverleys – A Garden of Rooms

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On my recent trip to England with Carolyn Mullet’s Carex Tours, one of the most beautiful gardens we saw was Malverleys, a private home in East Woodhay, Hampshire featuring an 1870s house on a 60-acre estate, of which 10 acres are intensively gardened, and the rest parkland or sheep pasture. We strolled in past the Topiary Meadow, formal yew topiaries in an ebullient meadow of wildflowers and grasses, reminiscent of the meadow at Great Dixter that I’d seen just days earlier. That isn’t surprising, perhaps, since Malverleys’ grounds manager is…..

……Mat Reese, who after training in horticulture at college, worked at Wisley, then Kew, before working with the late Christopher Lloyd at Dixter. Mat has become well-known in English gardening circles for his regular features in Gardens Illustrated that explore design principles he’s used at Malverleys. He makes a few introductory remarks, then leads us on our tour.

We begin in the Cloister Garden with its long rill and arching fountains leading from a statue of Neptune under a double allée of Japanese cherries.

The walls of the Cloister Garden are layered Cotswold stone topped with curved York stone slabs and adorned here and there with red valerian (Centranthus ruber). On our visit, the beautiful climbing rose ‘Meg’ was in full bloom.

‘Meg’ is a repeat-flowering, fragrant climber introduced in 1954 and still winning plaudits.

One of the notable features at Malverleys is that the gardens almost always frame the view from one garden into another . Here we see the neighbouring Hot Garden from the Cloister….

…… and the perfect frame of the statuary in the Cloister looking back from the Hot Garden.

Note the view from the sunken Hot Garden to the ornate chicken house/dovecote across the way. Though this garden was going through what the English call “the June gap” between the bulbs and early perennials of spring and the fulsome bloom of midsummer, it features a host of vibrantly-coloured trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants. The shrub rose at left, below,

…. is a dark-eyed cultivar called ‘For Your Eyes Only’, part of a trend in rose hybridization to use Rosa persica, which was once classified as Hulthemia persica but has now joined the Rosa genus.

The Hot Garden features strong colours of red, orange, pink and yellow with foliage extending from purple to chartreuse-gold. Aquilegia ‘Yellow Star’, Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’ and a lupine I believe is ‘Beefeater’.

Special plants are used here and in all the gardens. Below is Toona sinensis ‘Flamingo’ with its pink spring foliage that turns yellow before becoming green in summer.

I’m a great fan of lime and chartreuse foliage to liven the garden, and Cornus controversa ‘Aurea’, below, with its layered branching is one of the finest large shrubs.

At a different scale, but also bearing delightful gold leaves is the golden ghost bramble, Rubus cockburnianus ‘Goldenvale’.

The view, below, at the entrance into the Pond Garden from the Hot Garden is one of my favourite images from my stay in England.   The statue is framed by Magnolia ‘Susan’ and the cascading flowers of Wisteria x valderi ‘Burford’. To the right are the yellow umbel flowers of giant fennel, Ferula communis and at lower right, Phlomis fruticosa. The wisteria is a hybrid of W. brachybotrys x W. floribunda, by wisteria expert James Compton, formerly head gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden.

Though the pond is a formal rectangular shape, its plantings are naturalistic, evoking a pond in a wild setting. Once again, you also see the view right through to the chicken house.

Next up is the Cool Garden with its copper water basin and relaxed planting scheme of blues, lavenders, whites and mauves.

Here the formality of the statuary contrasts with the cottage garden ethos

There’s a meadow-like quality to combinations here, like the columbines, blue woodruff and pink chervil.

Annuals such as blue woodruff (Asperula orientalis), below, are used throughout Malverleys to lend colour thorughout the season.

I love the delicate pink flowers of hairy chervil (Chaerophyllum hirsutum ‘Roseum’), one of many perennial umbellifers used at Malverleys.

Another annual used extensively by Mat in several gardens is slender corn cockle, Agrostemma gracile ‘Pink’, native to Greece. Below we see it with creeping navelwort, Omphalodes verna.

The most intensively-gardened part of Malverleys is the area around the 1870s house – a parallel border along the terrace, the East Border separating it from the other gardens and the Wedding Ring Border leading from the entrance, where Mat Reese lost his ring many years ago. Here, a late lilac was in flower, Syringa x josiflexa ‘Bellicent’ bred in 1936 by the renowned Canadian hybridist Isabella Preston.

Colours in the house borders are rich and jewel-like, with lots of purple, blue, magenta and red.

The walls of the 1870 Victorian mansion are cloaked with climbers……

….including Rosa ‘Buff Beauty’ and the yellow form of Lady Banks’ rose, R. banksiae ‘Lutea’. Plants like santolina are allowed to spill across the paving.

In the Terrace Garden is a single hybrid tea whose interesting pedigree resonated with Mat Reese. For this particular rose, ‘Mrs. Oakley-Fisher’, from 1921, is a cutting that came from a rose at Great Dixter that was in turn grown as a cutting sent by Vita Sackville-West to Christopher Lloyd many decades ago.

Again, we see the beautiful Lupinus ‘Beefeater’ in the house border, paired with the lilac-purple Californian native lacy phacelia, Phacelia tanacetifolia.

The bright magenta Byzantine gladiolus, G. communis var. byzantinus, plays a starring role in the house border, along with various alliums, perennial geraniums, eryngium, honeywort (Cerinthe major ‘Purpurascens’) and tall mauve corn cockle (Agrostemma gracile ‘Pink’).

Here is a detail from this lovely purple-blue-magenta border: Eryngium x zabelii ‘Big Blue’ & Geranium ‘Dragon Heart’

And another pretty pairing with slender corn cockle, Agrostemma gracile ‘Pink’ and Geranium ‘Brookside’

Leaving the House Garden, we come to The Stumpery. Popular in the Victorian era, it is described on the Malverleys website as a “woodland folly constructed out of a collection of old tree stumps positioned at dramatic angles”. Irrigated via overhead misting, it creates moisture needed for tree ferns and other shade-lovers.

There is a slightly Jurassic Park feeling to this little garden.

Heading into the big Walled Garden, we come to a spectacular sight whose flowering was timed just perfectly for our visit: the magnificent laburnum arch (L. watereri var. vossii). I have visited the late Rosemary Verey’s famous laburnum arch at Barnsley House (and chatted with her in her dining room) and have strolled the lovely laburnum walk at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden, but neither was as lusciously floriferous as Malverleys.

The Walled Garden is large and diverse. It features cutting gardens, a peony border, a tennis court (below)……

….. and ornate fruit cages.

I am delighted to see Malverleys’ fabulous specimen of the famous Rosa ‘Climbing Cecile Brunner’ at peak bloom. How lucky to be in England in a June when the roses here and in the Rose Garden at Kew, which I visited days earlier, are perfection. This rose was introduced in California in 1894 by the German-born breeder Franz B. Hosp, who noticed the long wands of flowers sporting on one of the Cecile Brunner polyantha sweetheart shrub roses he grew and selected it as a climber. Repeat-flowering, it will reach 6 m (20 ft) when happy.

The Kitchen Garden contains a profusion of leafy vegetables, many now destined to be featured in the brand-new…..

……Malverleys Farm & Dining  shop which just by chance happens to have its grand opening on the day of our visit. According to a December article in the Sunday Times, Emily von Opel, who with her husband Georg owns Malverley and loves walking the paths of the garden to “escape from the hustle and bustle of life”, decided to open the space to serve dishes made from the produce of the kitchen garden, provide a workshop venue and offer British-made homewares and plants for sale.

Doesn’t this bouquet say “June”, with all its romantic profusion?

Plants are offered for sale as well.

Finally…. I’ve saved the best for last, because Malverleys has justifiably become famous for its luscious White Garden. And having visited Sissinghurst’s renowned version just the week before, I would have to say that Mat Reese scores the grand prize for his interpretation, which is clearly at its peak in early June. Though most of the plants feature white flowers, there are a few, like the strongly-perfumed hybrid musk Rosa ‘Penelope’ with its pale peach-pink blossoms, included.

Peonies, white foxgloves, Eremurus ‘Joanna’, Lupinus ‘Noble Maiden’ and wisteria surround one of four formal raised pools in the White Garden.

And a final image from the White Garden of Papaver orientale ‘Royal Wedding’ and Lupinus ‘Polar Princess’. Thanks to Malverleys, for its horticultural excellence, beautiful design and generosity to the community.

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Like English gardens? Visit my blog on Dan Pearson & Huw Morgan’s ‘Hillside’ in Somerset.

Hillside:  Dan Pearson and Huw Morgan in Somerset

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It is somewhat daunting to write about a garden whose owners are a world-renowned designer with a lyrical, thoughtful writing style and a photographer-writer who chronicles their garden’s finest moments (and his own delicious recipes) in mouth-watering images for their beautiful online magazine Dig Delve. But to visit Hillside is to be enchanted – by its story, its scope, its exquisite melding of the garden to the land, and the land to the garden, and what came long before. So I will attempt to capture a little of the great joy of my short time there in early June.    

We start in the outdoor kitchen where our gracious and hospitable hosts, Dan Pearson, left, and Huw Morgan, right, serve us a refreshing elderflower concoction in pretty pottery cups. Here we hear a little history before wandering the 20-acre smallholding near Bath, which they purchased in 2010 from the estate of the previous owner, Raymond Lewis, an elderly farmer born on the property who had grazed his cattle to the very edges of the rolling limestone pastures and milked the cows in an old tin barn. Upon his death, friends living across the stream at the bottom of the valley below told Dan and Huw that the property was available. After walking the fields with the farmer’s brother, visiting the old orchard and inspecting the house that had last been decorated when the brothers’ mother was alive, Dan wrote later in The Guardian: “There were no ifs, buts or maybes. No doubt. It was where we wanted to be.”  It would take three trips from London eight months later, the car boot jammed with favourite plants from their long, narrow Peckham garden, to begin to put their minds to this vast empty canvas.

They went slowly, doing little for the first years. As Dan wrote in Dig Delve, “It took that long to know what to do with the place and what has felt right here.”  In autumn 2012, they installed a pair of 18th century granite troughs used originally for tanning leather, now intended to gather rainwater. Once the steep land grade was levelled on this upper spine, the troughs would connect the house with the barns and form the gateway to what would become the new kitchen garden beyond.

The horizontal line of the troughs, in the background below, also echoes the horizontal line of 52 ancient beech trees on Freezing Hill in the far distance, which occupies a Bronze Age landform between Somerset and the Cotswolds.

In gravelly rubble between the house and the troughs, Dan grows favourite clumping plants such as eryngium and calamint along with a host of self-seeders: cephalaria, corn cockle, silvery ballota, poppies, blue flax and a white California poppy (Eschscholzia californica ‘Ivory Castle’).

To understand the initial challenges posed by the steep lie of the land, it’s helpful to read Dan’s essay The Kitchen Garden tracking the 4-year progress from the trough installation to the first harvest.  As he wrote, “When we arrived here the flat ground was literally no more than a strip in front of the outbuildings. We perched a table and chairs there to make the most of not being on the angle”.  Gardening on the steep hillside was a challenge: “Sowing, thinning, weeding and harvesting on a slope were all that much harder with one leg shorter than the other and tools and buckets balanced.” In time the ground near the barns was leveled and a breeze-block wall built to hold back the sloping fields above, to reflect heat and the fragrance of perfumed plants……

…. and to give fruits such as cordon-espaliered pears, below, a warm surface on which to ripen. A fig in this area is a cutting of ‘White Marseilles’ from Dan’s project at Lambeth Palace, the parent plant “brought from Rome by the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole, in 1556.”

In the early years, trees were planted: several in a new orchard; some in a ‘blossom wood’ of native species; hazels and alders down by the stream; memorial trees to honour missed friends; and a katsura grove in the valley with its exquisite autumn perfume to evoke Dan’s long project at Tokachi Forest in Hokkaido, Japan. Trial beds held David Austin roses for cutting, 56 varieties of dahlia and a rainbow of tulips. Signature plants appeared, including different species of towering giant fennel (Ferula spp.), a Mediterranean plant I saw first in the ruins of Troy many years ago, so it always makes me think of Homer to see it now. Dan has used Ferula communis subsp. glauca in his design for the Delos Garden at Sissinghurst. (More on that later.)

Rusticity and a sense of place is preserved in the tin walls of the barn, a backdrop to feverfew, bronze fennel and the unusual lilac-purple valerian, Centranthus lecoqii.  

English gardeners seem to grow more umbellifers than I’ve counted anywhere in my North American travels, and I had to ask Dan twice the name of the lovely one below. It’s Athamanta turbith, a cold-hardy native of the Balkans.

Another plant used by Dan in Delos at Sissinghurst also appears in this upper garden: tall pink Dianthus carthusianorum, shown here (in terrible sunlight, sorry) with Achillea ‘Moonlight’.

Constructed in spring 2014, the kitchen garden comprises a double row of steel-edged, rectangular beds with a broad walk in-between.

The soil where the vegetables grow is rich and productive. According to an elderly neighbour, in the 1960s the former owner’s parents grew vegetables in a market garden on the slopes, and berried boughs from holly trees still standing were harvested for Christmas wreaths for the market.

Creative trellising allows vertical growing of cucumbers and summer squash. Other crops include courgettes, French and runner beans, peppers, salad greens, carrots, turnips, beets, sweet corn and tomatoes (in a poly house).  

Berries and currants are grown in beds with frames that can be netted later against birds.

Three varieties of rhubarb are grown at Hillside, providing the ingredients for Huw’s delectable rhubarb galette.

Time is fleeting and Dan leads us down a path through the meadows towards the brook.  When I look up the hill through a bouquet of massive Gunnera manicata leaves….

….. that I literally held above my head as I passed under them a moment earlier, illustrating the deceptive scale, I see the cluster of buildings at the top. Closest is the milking barn, now the studio office where Dan and Huw carry out their design work.  To its right is the main ornamental garden, which we’ll visit in a few minutes.

On the way to the pond, Dan pauses in the meadow surrounded by oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare), buttercups (Ranunculus acris) and black knapweed (Centaurea nigra). He is in the process of overseeding the meadows with yellow rattle and native orchids, including gift seeds harvested by Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter, to improve the biodiversity here.

 The pond is just two years old, the marginal plants still finding their feet. But water has always been important to Dan in a garden – and this pond might host two-legged swimmers, as well as aquatic flora.  

I am fond of meadows, having grown one or two myself, so I take note of the red campion (Silene dioica)……

….. and blue-flowered Caucasian comfrey (Symphytum caucasicum).

Water runs in a ditch through parts of the low meadows and after planting the banks with marsh marigolds and snowdrops, Dan sought to add small bridges. Apart from a pair made of stone, he riffed on Japanese landscape design with his own timber zig-zag bridge.   

In the damp ground alongside the bridge grows Iris x robusta ‘Dark Aura’.

Despite watching my legs and hands as I navigate the paths, the stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) seem to recognize a feckless Canadian and soon I am rubbing my wrist with a dock leaf (Rumex obtusifolius) proffered by Dan. (It helps with the sting but I have impressive raised welts the next day that cause me to reflect on the traditional medicinal value of this common European plant which, I suppose, would cause you to forget about your chronic arthritis while your skin deals with the acute inflammation.)  

Back at the top, we are now let loose in Hillside’s ornamental garden, which occupies several large, irregularly-shaped beds on the upper slope. Planted in Spring 2017 and finished in Autumn 2017, it was the result of five years of waiting and planning. There is so much to see here, but not nearly enough time to study it carefully.

Burgundy Knautia macedonica is stealing the show, with yellow Euphorbia wallichii in the rear. The profusion of summer perennials and ornamental grasses is still to come, which we can glimpse thanks to Dig Delve’s back issues.

A dark opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) is the progeny of gifted seed from plants Dan saw when cycling to work in his early 20s. It is the only variety he grows, careful not to let it hybridize with the mauve and pink ones his neighbours grow.  

The ornamental garden is a keen plantsman’s lair and it is such fun for us to learn the names of new plants. This is Nepeta ‘Blue Dragon’ a large-flowered hybrid of N. yunnanensis and N. nervosa.

Greek native yellow-banded iris (Iris orientalis) partners with a caramel-colored baptisia in one place…

…. while perfumed sweet peas twine pea sticks in another.

Sulfur clover (Trifolium ocroleuchon) has many of us clicking shutters.

Though it would be lovely to stay another week, there’s just enough time to see the latest chapter at Hillside. This spring, after contemplating the site for a few years and planting it first with a green manure, then a pastel mix of Nigel Dunnett’s ‘Pictorial Meadows’ seeds, a new garden has taken shape. It’s a Mediterranean garden inspired partly by Dan’s work recreating the Delos Garden at Sissinghurst, where he’s been a consultant for almost a decade.  

The new garden features a 6-inch mulch of sharp sand, following principles established by Swedish designer Peter Korn.  It features drought-tolerant plants such as lilac Phlomis italica, below, verbascums and N. American desert perennials like Sphaeralcea ambigua.

I was fortunate to have visited Sissinghurst the previous weekend and saw the Delos Garden….

….. richly planted with asphodelines and sages, among other Mediterranean plants.

Its stone altars were brought in the 1820s from the Greek island by Vita Sackville-West’s husband Harold Nicholson’s seafaring great grandfather and acquired at auction by Harold when the family house in Ireland was sold in 1936.  I have a special fondness for the sacred island of Delos….

…. having visited myself in autumn more than a decade ago when the grasses and wildflowers had gone to seed and were blowing in the hot wind, below. It was my fervent desire to return one day in spring when the flowers are in bloom, but seeing Dan’s garden at Sissinghurst in early June might be the closest I come.

As we head back to the open kitchen, I pass a handsome shrub that Dan tells me is his friend Dan Hinkley’s introduction Hydrangea serrata ‘Plum Passion’.   

And in a sheltered spot near the house are pots of perfumed dianthus and society garlic (Tulbaghia ‘Moshoeshoe’).

As our visit is coming to an end, we are invited to sit and enjoy the lovely English garden tour custom of “tea and cake”.  Huw Morgan has worked his magic on blackcurrants, garnished lavishly with rose petals…..

….. and quite possibly the best lemon pound cake I’ve ever tasted, garnished with tiny elderflowers and lemon slices.   

And after the last crumb is finished and it’s time to head into Bath nearby, Dan and Huw insist on posing with us for a group photo – the perfect hosts with the perfect garden at the end of a perfect visit in Somerset.

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If you like naturalistic meadow gardening, you might wish to read my blog on Piet Oudolf’s entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden, published as:

Piet Oudolf – Meadow Maker Part One and Part Two.

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Dan Pearson’s website

I travelled with Carolyn Mullet’s Carex Tours .

Spring at Brigham Hill Farm

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One of the best things about travelling for me is visiting gardens.  And one of the best things about having pals who are gardeners is the chance to visit beautiful private gardens at the drop of a hat!  So it was that the day after our spectacular May visit to Garden in the Woods in Framingham, MA (see my 2-part blog beginning here), my dear friend Kim Cutler of Worcester MA and Doug and I found ourselves walking up the stone path in front of the pretty yellow house of Kim’s friends, Shirley and Peter Williams at Brigham Hill Farm in North Grafton, MA.  The oldest part of the house dates from approximately 1795 and the property is on land established by Charles Brigham in 1727. According to the Grafton Land Trust, “Charles Brigham was one of the ‘Forty Proprietors’ who were given the grant to settle Grafton by King George II of England. The farm eventually covered most of Brigham Hill and raised fine dairy cows.”

Though Shirley was entertaining a friend in her lovely screened porch….

…. she cheerfully invited us to tour around the property ourselves.

What a gorgeous spot to enjoy the view to the garden without being bothered by insects or inclement weather!

Since it was mid-May, the late tulips were still looking gorgeous and Shirley had filled vases….

….. and bottles with them from her cutting garden.

Off we went past a towering sugar maple tree and stone wall toward the still-awakening perennial garden.

We passed the old, beautifully-restored 18th century barn on the right and more of the amazing stone walls that characterize Brigham Hill.  The house and barn are part of the parcel of land purchased in 1975 by Shirley and Peter Williams.  In time, Shirley and Peter purchased a large, adjacent piece of land and in 2007 they gifted a conservation restriction on the land to the Grafton Land Trust; its name is the Williams Preserve. But in those early days after their children were raised, the house and barn restored and the stone walls rebuilt, they were ready to begin gardening in earnest, at times seeking the expertise of designer/plantsman Warren Leach of Tranquil Lake Nursery in Rehoboth MA.

There were late daffodils and lots of fragrant lilacs nestled beside the stone walls.

Edible gardens are a big summer focus at Brigham Hill but I had never seen an espaliered apple using the heat of a stone wall to produce fruit.

Rhododendrons looked lovely, too.

Though billowing beds in the perennial garden form the focus in this area later in the season, I was happy to find this rustic, little red cedar pergola with….

….. bleeding hearts and Japanese hakone grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) looking fresh and lovely in a shady planting that also featured…

….. a stunning array of Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum) with bloodroot foliage (Sanguinaria canadensis).

I am a great fan of drama in the garden and this Warren Leach-designed dark border at the barn tickled my colour fancy a lot!

The big plants are hardy ‘Grace’ smoke bush (Cotinus hybrid) kept pruned into a columnar shape and tender black cordylines in pots.

At their base were the dark tulip ‘Queen of Night’ and the emerging black leaves of cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’).

Nearby, a cold frame contained an assortment of lush leaf lettuce for spring salads….

… while around the corner were Shirley’s annual seedlings, including varieties of love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena), statice and amaranth.

Across the way, a shade-dappled woodland on a rocky outcrop beckoned to us. At one time, according to a story by Carol Stocker in the Boston Globe, this was originally “a hill overrun by Japanese knotweed and poison ivy.”  Warren Leach found original granite foundation stones from the 18th century barn and “cellar holes” left as remnants of old colonial settler homes and used them to create the pond, rill, small waterfall and rugged stone steps that makes this feature so magical.

I was enchanted by the reflections of the chartreuse spring tree canopy in the pond.

Large granite pieces form sturdy steps…

…. while water bubbles down between stones.

Velvety moss is a major part of the charm of this garden….

…. but it is also a garden of sedges and woodland plants including greater yellow ladyslipper (Cypripedium parviflorum var. pubescens)….

…. which is such an iconic native orchid for the northeast….

… and Jacob’s ladder (Polemonium caeruleum)…

…. and crested iris (I. cristata).

This was a pretty combination of Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) with yellow wood poppies (Stylophorum diphyllum) and ostrich ferns (Matteucia struthiopteris).

Rhododendrons were flowering with the ferns in the woodland, too, and….

…. at the very edge, tulips grew in a carpet of Virginia bluebells.

Back out in the open, late-season tulips were still looking good in Shirley’s raised cutting bed.  What a luxury, to have armfuls of tulips for vases!

Next up was the chicken coop with its succulent green-roof planted with sempervivums or (haha) “hens-and-chicks” – a nice pad for the resident hens.

Strawberry plants were flowering behind critter-proof protective mesh.

Caned berry bushes have their own enclosure.

The back of the house with its dining terrace features more stone walls, their geometric lines echoed in the clipped hedges. Later, colourful perennials will emerge in the beds here. Those stone steps lead into the walled vegetable garden, still unplanted.

If you visit a garden in May, you see spring things, but I did regret not being able to see the large, raised-bed vegetable parterre behind the stone wall in summer.

Trees, both in the native forest on the property and cultivated in the garden, are a focus at Brigham Hill Farm.  This featherleaf Japanese maple is a good example, as are…

…. the trees in the “arboretum”, including native flowering dogwood (Cornus florida)…

…. which looked resplendent against the blue May sky.  

We circled around to the front of the house and met Shirley’s guest, Kathleen Ladd, departing with a giant bouquet of freshly-cut lilacs and tulips, a lovely gesture from a gardener who also shares the expansive beauty of Brigham Hill Farm with many charities and groups for fundraising events

Kathleen Ladd with bouquet of lilacs and tulips from Shirley Williams's garden.

At the gate, we said farewell to my friend, gardener and well-known potter Kim Cutler (left), and to Shirley Williams, thanking her for her generosity in sharing her garden with us, strangers from Canada!  It was a highlight of our spring road trip.  (Stay tuned for Chanticleer!)

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Want to see some of the other inspiring private gardens I’ve photographed?
Here is Katerina Georgi’s garden in Greece 
This is tequila expert Lucinda Hutson’s fabulous garden in Austin, TX
The spectacular Denver CO garden of Rob Proctor & David Macke
The Giant’s House in Akaroa NZ – a mosaic masterpiece
Architect & art collector Sir Miles Warren’s garden Ohinetahi in NZ
Garden designer Barbara Katz’s gorgeous garden in Bethesda, MD
My friend and plantswoman Marnie Wright’s garden in Bracebridge ON