Chanticleer Garden in Early Autumn – Part 2

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Janet

When I paused my tour in my last blog, Part 1, we were leaving the Ruin Garden. Let’s take a moment to explore a little section of Minder Woods, nearby. This entrance moves through a planting of white wood aster (Eurybia divaricata) and ostrich ferns on the left and Begonia grandis var. evansiana ‘Alba’ on the right.

Further down the path are ‘Pamina’ Japanese anemones (Anemone hupehensis var. japonica) with ostrich ferns.

I loved this artful bench, just one of numerous handsome places to sit in Chanticleer’s gardens.

This tea viburnum (V. setigerum) is known for its dependable autumn display of berries.

Japanese toad lily season had begun; the one below is Tricyrtis hirta ‘Miyazaki’.

Though I grow a few species of snakeroot, I had never seen this compact one: Actaea japonica var. acerina.

Touring the Gravel Garden, below, is a little like walking into a drought-tolerant plant treasure box. Situated on a sunny, south-facing slope, it is packed with plants thriving in gritty soil that has also been top-dressed with gravel. Plants might be native drylanders, Mediterranean species, succulents or cacti. Below, a big beaked yucca (Y. rostrata) adds exclamation marks to one bed. Though this yucca is cold-hardy, any tender plants used here are moved by cart to heated greenhouses for the winter.

I had to work to find the name of the yellow-flowered plant in the trough on the right; it’s Bigelowia nuttallii, Nuttall’s rayless goldenrod.

Look at this beautiful Agave attenuata in its trough. Alongside is an interesting prickly-pear cactus that I think might be Opuntia cochenillifera ‘Variegated’.

Lisa Roper, the Gravel Garden horticulturist (and my friend) likes to combine different plant textures, for example the big century plant (Agave americana) below with fine-textured plants like lavender and santolina. Oh, and that lovely little purple-flowered plant?

I’m so glad you asked! I asked Joe Henderson and he supplied the name. It’s Eryngium leavenworthii or Leavenworth’s eryngo, an annual native to dry, rocky prairies and waste places in the central U.S.

The gravel garden occupies niches and stone steps up a gently-sloped hill. In fact, each step has its own little collection in Chanticleer’s plant list which is updated yearly. Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) is allowed to self-seed around, but all self-seeders are carefully edited — a chore in rich gravel.

Seedheads offer a clue to what was blooming here in summer, like the wand-like Liatris microcephala and the Seseli gummiferum with its umbel inflorescence, below.

Lisa incorporates lots of interesting gladiolus species in the garden, including the beauty below, which I believe to be G. oppositiflorus.

Of the fine-textured carexes and grasses, this seep muhly grass stands out, Muhlenbergia reverchonii.

I had to ask my friends on Facebook’s Plant Idents page to help me out with an i.d. for the plant below. We finally came up with the genus Pseudognaphalium.… and then I was able to refer to the online plant list to give us the species P. obtusifolium, better known as sweet everlasting, or rabbit tobacco. It has a rich ethnobotanical history.

I could have stayed in the Gravel Garden all night, but our 4-hour stay meant I had to keep moving, so down I went to explore the sweeping beds between the Gravel Garden and the great lawn below the main house. These beds are considered part of Minder Woods. They’re always inspiring and often seem to have a purple-and-orange theme, including big purple alliums and orange kniphofia I photographed one spring. This time of year, asters (Symphyotrichum laeve ‘Bluebird’), Russian sage (Salvia yangii/Perovskia atriplicifolia) and tender sages like Salvia ‘Amistad’ and Salvia leucantha form the purple/blue palette while the orange is supplied by Zinnia ‘Queen Lime Orange’, tall ‘Garland Orange’ marigolds (Tagetes erecta), Cosmos sulphureus ‘Sunset Orange’, Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifolia) and dahlias ‘Sonic Boom’, ‘Kabloom’, ‘Honeymoon’ and ‘David Howard’, among others.

The orange flowers below include zinnia, cosmos and marigold. In these photos you can also see the first year rosettes of the biennial verbascums that will tower in these beds next year.

What would our late summer-autumn gardens be without asters? Chanticleer uses a combination in its gardens, but the taller lavender-lilac ones seem to be Symphyotrichum laeve ‘Bluebird’.

Well-grown annuals add so much to the late summer garden. Below is the fabulous, tall zinnia, ‘Queen Lime Orange’. On the right is tender Mexican sage, Salvia leucantha ‘Santa Barbara’. The hydrangea is H. paniculata ‘Limelight’.

Adding a screen-like grass in front of plants turns plant design into a bewitching form of stagecraft. That’s purple love grass (Eragrostis spectabilis), below……

…. and look how it serves as a mysterious scrim curtain in front of the brilliant zinnias. Isn’t it magical?

The Elevated Walk was built in 2015 to access the main house from the ponds and the great lawn below, and its plant roster has matured beautifully now. Here is that white-flowered sweet everlasting again, along with the compact Russian sage ‘Little Spire’ and rattlesnake master. The wine-coloured seedheads are Angelica gigas. The walkway itself is composed of porous materials.

The areas beneath the Elevated Walk are also planted with trees, shrubs and perennials, like the Aspen Grove, below. That means they’re at eye level with visitors on the walkway, a little like a treetop walk in other gardens.

With its persistent seed heads, rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) adds seasons of interest to a border. And those oblong, dark seedheads belong to Rudbeckia maxima.

The Apple House occupies a place of honor on the walkway. Go inside and you’re treated to fabulous, colourful murals – but no apples these days.

A few of my fellow garden bloggers stopped on the Elevated Walk to admire the fall-changing foliage of this beautiful Japanese maple (Acer palmatum subsp. amoenum). And look at that stunning railing

The prize at the top of the walkway is Chanticleer House, once home to Adolph Rosengarten Sr. and his wife, and also the setting for several colourful flower beds, like the one in the Overlook below, punctuated by spears of the succulent Furcraea foetida ‘Mediopicta‘. The variegated plant at right is Euphorbia x martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’.

I grew angelonia (purple plant below) for the first time this summer, and though it lasted in flower for months, I didn’t see one bee or butterfly on it. Too bad – otherwise the perfect bedding annual. Blue-flowered Salvia farinacea, on the other hand, is a great pollinator plant. The nodding, white and pink flowers are South African foxglove (Ceratotheca triloba).

The fluffy white flowers below belong to Euphorbia hypericifiolia Breathless Blush.

The house terrace always features an array of chartreuse-leaved plants. I’m not exactly sure what the chartreuse plant below is, but it might be Salix sachalinensis ‘Golden Sunshine’.

This border was tropical-looking, with its spiky golden bromeliads (Aechmea blanchetiana Hawaii). The phormum at right is ‘Pink Panther’.

I love the little gloriosa daisy at front, R. hirta ‘Zahara’. The twirly, brown foliage plant at the rear is Acalypha wilkesiana ‘Ceylon’.

Dozens of pots were arrayed in front of Chanticleer House, and those with dark leaves played nicely with the dark shutters.

And here is a charming gesture that sets Chanticleer apart from so many gardens. There is always a basin filled with colourful floating flowers and leaves plucked from the gardens. This one even contains the green fruit colloquially known as, yes, “hairy balls”, but is more properly called Gomphocarpus physocarpus. A tender shrub related to milkweeds, it also provides food for monarch butterfly caterpillars.

A few of my fellow garden bloggers were relaxing on the sun porch. Originally glassed-in, it was a favourite lookout for Adolph Rosengarten Sr’s wife, Christine Penrose Rosengarten.

The porch featured one of the many beautiful floral arrangements crafted from the garden’s flowers. (And there is that spectacular ‘Harvey Koop’ dahlia from the Cutting Garden in Part One!)

As a confirmed ‘meadow gardener’, one of the reasons I was overjoyed to be visiting Chanticleer in late summer was the chance to see the Flowery Lawn. Originally a rectangle of manicured turfgrass between the house and swimming pool, the decision to let it become a tended meadow was such a good one. In spring, it’s all daffodils, but on this day it featured several types of anise hyssop (Agastache) including ‘Blue Fortune’, ‘Blue Boa’, ‘Little Adder’, ‘Purple Haze’ and ‘Serpentine’. Though native butterfly milkweed was out of bloom, tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) added flashes of orange. The tall plant with yellow flowers is a daylily, Hemerocallis ‘September Sol’.

The dark-blue salvia with the anise hyssop is ‘Big Blue’ — and it looks to me like pale-mauve calamint (Calamintha nepeta) is in this garden too.

A lonely monarch butterfly was nectaring on the asclepias before the big migration south. In our region, it was a very poor summer for monarchs – I only saw 2 at our cottage, and no eggs on all my milkweed.

A big carpenter bee was foraging on the anise hyssop.

The bloggers were treated to a delicious Middle Eastern meal in the Chanticleer House garden, which gave me time to sit and enjoy yet another bouquet. I love the way the crimson amaranth cascades so nicely. Those tiny orange fruits, by the way, come from Talinum grandiflorum, aka “jewels of Opar”.

The swimming pool always look so inviting. (Way back in the day, a few decades ago, I did have a dip in that pool – invited, of course!)

The Old French literary word for rooster was chantecler and there are many carved versions at Chanticleer.

Who wouldn’t want to roost in this lovely garden, amongst silvery euphorbias and crambes?

The East Bed forms the boundary to the house garden, and is filled with lush tropicals, like the bananas, ‘Hilo Beauty’ caladium, ‘King Tut’ dwarf cyperus, and more.

I’m always drawn to inspiring colour combinations, and this tropical duo in the East Bed rang my bell. The taro is Colocasia ‘Distant Memory’; the red-leaved Mexican native shrub is Euphorbia cotinifolia, sometimes called smoketree spurge.

Aiming for one last visit to the Teacup Garden, I walked out of the main house garden towards Emily’s house, i.e. the offices and visitor’s centre, where this massive oak tree was carpeted with Symphyotrichum ericoides ‘Snow Flurry’, a compact heath aster used extensively in many of the gardens.

How much fun is this? Tropical lianas getting the balcony treatment.

I circled around the front of Emily’s house, where of course there were more spectacular plant designs.

This luscious arrangement of tropicals was my last plant photo, including strap-leaved Alcantarea imperialis, pink-leaved caladiums, canna lily, begonias and other delicious plants. And, of course, a bench for enjoyment.

And as if these precious hours at Chanticleer weren’t enough, along with food and drinks there was a great band.

We danced! Even those of us with aching knees from walking up and down the garden’s hills danced. It was another visit we won’t soon forget. Thank you Bill Thomas and the entire Chanticleer team. You are simply the best.

Chanticleer Garden in Early Autumn – Part 1

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Janet

To visit my favourite garden in the entire world is always a special gift, so when I heard that my gang of garden bloggers had chosen Philadelphia to be the centre of our annual Garden Bloggers’ Fling in the last week of September, I was ecstatic. Even if Chanticleer had been the only garden we saw, it would have been enough, in my view. But of course it wasn’t; we saw many beautiful gardens. But let’s start here with a map, to familiarize you with the various theme gardens on the 35-acre property.

The thing about Chanticleer is that you can visit at different times of the year and see a very different garden; there is never enough time. After visiting in June 2014, I wrote a 2-part blog filled with poppies, foxgloves, sages and alliums. In May 2022, I used my blog to trace the history of the Rosengarten family, who in 1913 made their summer home here on Philadelphia’s Main Line in the town of Wayne; a decade later it became their full-time residence. There were peonies, columbine, wisteria and tuliptree in flower on that enchanting spring visit. But no matter which season, I always begin in the Teacup Garden, named for its distinctive overflowing fountain. This is like a tiny, perfect stage set filled each year with a new cast of characters, always with its own colour scheme. Sometimes it’s a dry garden, often tropicals mix with annuals. This year, if asked to name it, and considering the silvery Senecio vira-vira and olive trees, I might offer “pewter perfection”.

The basin in front of the garden is resplendent with a day-blooming tropical waterlily.

The fountain originated with the Rosengarten family….

…..and is believed to have been purchased by them in Florence, Italy in the 1920s. The pretty building adjacent to the Teacup Garden houses Chanticleer’s administrative offices. It was originally the home of Alfred Rosengarten’s daughter Emily, built for her on her wedding in 1935. The Rosengarten family home itself is called Chanticleer House and has its own gardens.

The Teacup Garden features a number of urns and pots, like this glazed, teal-blue urn filled with a stunning, chartreuse jasmine called Fiona Sunrise (Jasminum officinale)….

… and this one, draped with Pilea glauca ‘Aquamarine’.

This triangular container grouping contains several types of lavender and a tall marigold, Tagetes ‘Garland Orange’, among other plants.

Attention to detail is a hallmark of Chanticleer, as evidenced by the small, elegant touches like bouquets placed here and there, including in the Ladies’ Room adjacent to the Teacup Garden.

I took a quick look in the Upper Border characterized by its white flower palette and noted a handsome Texas Star hibiscus (H. coccineus ‘Albus’). But there wasn’t enough time to tarry here, and having visited Chanticleer before, I knew how to budget the few hours I had.

So off I went to the Tennis Court Garden below, named for the Rosengarten era but now converted into a garden of sweeping borders with a viewing arbor to take it all in. That yew on the left is Taxus ‘Beanpole’ – an apt name – and on the right, elegant ‘Honorine Jobert’ Japanese anemones. The echinacea is ‘Green Jewel’.

The stairs to the garden are one of my favourite design touches, with their built in planters. This year they contain gorgeous white Symphyotrichum ericoides ‘Snow Flurry’, dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), Lantana camara ‘Samantha’ and Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’.

Who would ever think about punctuating a linear planter with tiny dawn redwoods? Or, put another way, why not use your nursery plants as decorative flourishes?

The old tennis court is planted with lush, curved borders.

Despite reading praises about this late-flowering perennial, I had never before seen it. Meet Letterman’s ironweed, Vernonia lettermanii ‘Iron Butterfly’. The edging is Heuchera ‘Caramel’.

I loved this combination of lilac aster (not on the master list but likely Symphyotrichum laeve ‘Bluebird’) with Succisella inflexa ‘Frosted Pearls’, aka devil’s bit.

The bumble bees were enjoying the knautia-like heads of the flowers.

The nearby Cutting Garden is a place of chaotic loveliness in late September. Its central path covered with pinestraw leads to the fenced Vegetable Garden.

There are annuals, perennials, tender bulbs and even the odd staked cherry tomato in the Cutting Garden. Plus, of course, all the flowers used in Chanticleer’s season-long floral arrangements. That dark-headed grass is Pennisetum glaucum ‘Jade Princess’.

The dark red plant near the cosmos and ageratum is cranberry hibiscus (Hibiscus acetosella). It makes a luscious foliage filler in floral arrangements.

That towering yellow daisy in the back is willowleaf sunflower (Helianthus salicifolius).

Have you ever seen a more beautiful dahlia? It’s called ‘Harvey Koop’, and I spotted it later in a bouquet.

One could spend hours in Bell’s Run exploring the woodland jewels, then strolling through the Creek Garden with its moisture-loving plants, but I wanted to focus on the flowering jewels of late summer, so after a quick walk along the lovely creek….

…. I came back to the light in the Ruin Garden’s sporobolus meadow (S. heterolepis) with its flanking hydrangeas (H. paniculata).

On the way to the ponds, I stopped in at the Arbor and took a moment to appreciate gardener Dan Benarcik’s distinctive “Chanticleer chairs” and the lime-green Carex oshimensis ‘Evercolor Everillo’ in the pots.

Then I walked past the Silver Garden with its yellow Sternbergia lutea, one of the finest autumn-flowering bulbs backed by a white aster.

The ponds are always a favourite destination before climbing back up the hill at Chanticleer. This one features a ledge waterfall. I believe the gold shrub is Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Filifera Aurea Nana’.

This pond hosts the white water lily Nymphaea ‘Pöstlingberg’.

Marginal aquatic plants enjoy the edges of the ponds. The white-flowered plant below is Echinodorus bracteatus ‘Lantau Lady’, aka Amazon sword.

The big koi always look a little hungry, though they are certainly well-fed! But a little begging can’t hurt, right?

But look what surprise awaited me at one of the ponds! This handsome great blue heron might have dreamt of koi but the most he managed to catch was a frog, or so I learned later. And did you know there’s an aquatic version of rattlesnake master? It’s marsh rattlesnake master Eryngium aquaticum, an American native whose habitat includes bogs, swamps and marshes. Another name is bitter snakeroot, reflecting its use by Native Americans to treat snakebites. Its spiky inflorescences start out blue, then fade to whitish-gray.

The heron seemed relatively unafraid of the visitors and moved around the pond while posing nicely, so I gave it a little more than its 15 photographic minutes of fame.

The waterlily in the heron pond is Nymphaea ‘Texas Dawn’.

I climbed the hill toward the other gardens past the Rock Ledge – a garden that shines in late spring but looked relaxed and lovely in late summer. The Japanese maple is Acer palmatum ‘Osakazuki’.

My eye caught movement in the sumptuous, blue closed bottle gentians (Gentiana andrewsii) and I stopped to watch bumble bees working feverishly to access the nectar inside.

I was delighted to find Joe Henderson, the horticulturist in charge of Chanticleer’s ponds. He’s a 25-year veteran of the garden, something so vital for continuity and creativity. And I realized, while chatting with him, that I’d actually visited his personal garden on a tour long ago. Since Chanticleer had rolled out the welcome mat for the Garden Bloggers Fling, with food stations, cocktails and even a musical tent with a great band, we were fortunate to meet many of the gardeners, who were there to greet us…..

…. sometimes even acting as bartenders, like Andrew Wiley, below, who benefited this year from The Chanticleer USA Christopher Lloyd Scholarship, an exchange conceived in order to provide a gardener from the United States with a year-long, practical education in the traditional style of ornamental gardening as practised at two of the world’s most respected gardens, Great Dixter in East Sussex, England, and Chanticleer. I visited Great Dixter in early June and blogged about that fabulous garden, but missed seeing Andrew.

I’m going to leave the Gravel Garden, my friend Lisa Roper’s horticultural hillside domain, until Part 2 of this blog, but let’s take a peek into the Ruin Garden at the top of hill beyond some of Lisa’s treasures. This intriguing garden was built on the foundation of Minder House (1925), originally next door to Chanticleer but acquired by Adolph Rosengarten, Sr. as a 1933 wedding gift for his son Adolph Rosengarten, Jr and his wife Janet. Nine years after the death of Adolph Jr. in 1990, Minder House was razed and under Chanticleer’s former director, Chris Woods, it was rebuilt as an evocative ruin of three-stone-walled ‘rooms’ that capture its spirit. The wall below is the entrance to the “library”.

Moving around the corner of the Ruin, we see the lemon-yellow Mohr’s rosinweed (Silphium mohrii), a native that’s become very popular recently since it does not have the aggressive tendencies of its cousins.

Let’s go into the Pool Room – with its interesting pool and fountain.

Draw a little closer and you see California sculptor Marcia Donahue’s intriguing, floating faces and the pool’s stone wall decked with beautiful Parthenocissus henryana.

Then there’s the “pool table”….

…..its surface bearing just enough water to perfectly reflect the….

….five varieties of Tillandsia in the mantle arrangement.

And with that, I will pause our tour until Part 2, featuring the Gravel Garden, Minder Woods and Chanticleer House with its flowery lawn. Stay tuned.

********

More Chanticleer blogs:

Touring Chanticleer – June 2014 – Part 1 and Part 2

May at Chanticleer – May 2022 – Part 1 and Part 2

Touring Chanticleer – Part 2

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Janet

If you’re rested up from the first half of our Chanticleer Garden tour, let’s keep going so we can fit in the rest of the garden before closing time.

We’ve headed out of Bell’s Woodland and up the hill through the long meadows to arrive at the Ruin Garden, which sits on the foundation of Minder House, which was the 1933 wedding gift home of Adolph Rosengarten Jr. and his wife Janet. In 1999, under Chanticleer’s former director Chris Woods, Minder House was razed and its memory evoked by landscape architect Mara Baird in a set of three stone-walled garden rooms that brilliantly capture its spirit. Let’s head through the “front door” into the Library.

A Princeton-educated lawyer, Adolph Jr. would certainly have had a rich collection of books in his library. In fact, later in life he endowed the University of Pennsylvania with a generous bequest in support of its libraries. He did not rest on the family money, but became involved in community. He was still a young man living here in the early years of the Depression when he spearheaded the movement to remove a slum in Wayne and establish a public housing project there. He also served during the Second World War as a decorated intelligence officer for the U.S. army, lending his linguistic expertise to the decoding of German messages in the top-secret Ultra spy unit at Bletchley Park, near London, England. After the war, he returned to Chanticleer, resumed his law practice, and subsequently earned two post-graduate degrees at the University of Pennsylvania – the last, at age 70, a doctorate in French military history. This remarkable man endowed Chanticleer with a foundation that continues to fund the garden to this day, with several family members on the board and the remarkable Bill Thomas serving as Executive Director and Head Gardener. Earlier, I’d persuaded Bill to stop for a moment so I could praise him here to his smiling face!

It’s fitting that that someone like Bill, whose background was in education at nearby Longwood Gardens, should run Chanticleer. For though there are no labels whatsoever to mar the beautiful landscape, education is very much a focus here, as Adolph Rosengarten Jr. stressed in his will. Throughout the gardens, there are artful boxes containing comprehensive plant lists available for a $2 fee; the lists are also offered free of charge online. This is the most painstaking garden inventory, each section the responsibility of a small staff of full-time horticulturists who have worked at Chanticleer since the garden was opened to the public in 1993, three years after Adolph Jr’s death.

But back to the Ruin. This is the cleverly-named Pool Room, with faces by sculptor Marcia Donahue partly submerged in the raised pool.

And this long, black granite banquet “table” in the Great Room is a brilliant water feature that reflects the plants within and outside the Ruin.

Head out of the Ruin and you find yourself at the top of the sprawling Gravel Garden. Walk down the steps and you’ll see hundreds and hundreds of plants that thrive quite happily with little water. I could gladly have spent all day in this garden.

Shown below are a few of the Gravel Garden’s jewels. Clockwise, from upper left: Spanish poppy – Papaver rupifragum; Anthemis tinctoria ‘Susanna Mitchell’ & Orlaya grandiflora, Eremurus x isabellinus ‘Cleopatra’, and Viscaria oculata ‘Blue Angel’.

The reality of gravel, of course, is that weeds love to grow in it as much as the lovely, welcome self-seeders. Here, with her back to me, is the Gravel Garden’s talented gardener Lisa Roper (also Chanticleer’s excellent photographer) and intern Kirsten Liebl, working to keep the gardens weed-free.

This path through the Gravel Garden features, at left, pale penstemon (P. pallidus) and tall yellow Carolina bushpea (Thermopsis villosa). At right is airy white Orlaya grandiflora with chartreuse Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’ and Crinum bulbispermum. At the rear is Yucca rostrata, a rare (for Pennsylvania) native of the hot southwest desert.

This arbor offers welcome shade and a good view of some of the Gravel Garden and the Rock Ledge beyond.

Look at the profusion of colour on the Rock Ledge leading down to the Pond Garden. Monet would have been delighted to set up his easel here! The dark purple salvia is Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’. Other flowers include red corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas), orange ‘Cleopatra’ foxtail lilies (E. x isabellinus) and bright-pink (Silene armeria)

Now we’re down at the linked ponds, with this delicious crescent of ‘Caradonna’ meadow sage, silvery Artemisia ludoviciana and a row of bobbing ‘Lucy Ball’ alliums. More yellow Thermopsis villosa rises on the other side of the pond. The Pond Garden and nearby Asian Woods are the domain of gardener Joe Henderson, who waves from a cart as he drives by.

There are lots of big koi in the pond and one blows bubbles as it swims past.

‘Pink Sensation’ waterlilies grace the largest pond. Like the other three, it’s surrounded by a diverse roster of marginal aquatic plants.

Variegated sweet flag (Acorus calamus ‘Variegatus’) makes a lovely scrim at the edge of the pond, where its roots can remain nice and wet.

The Pond Garden features many beautiful irises, but none lovelier than Iris spuria ‘Cinnabar Red’.

This pondside path is flanked by deep beds of luscious June perennials.

Candelabra primroses thrive in the damp primrose meadow adjacent to the ponds.

More moisture-loving beauties grace the bog near the ponds including, clockwise from upper left: pitcher plants (Sarracenia leucophylla) and (Sarracenia flava); purple marsh orchid (Dactylorhiza spp.); and pink ladyslipper (Cypripedium reginae).

And where there are ponds, there are always red-winged blackbirds keeping an eye out for visitors that come too close to their nests.

On my way from the ponds into the Asian Woods, I pass a large bed featuring this lovely vignette. So quietly perfect: golden catalpa (C. bignonioides ‘Aurea’) underplanted with golden-striped bamboo (Pleioblastus auricoma) with a swath of ‘Dallas Blues’ switch grass in front (Panicum virgatum).

Now we’re in the cool Asian Woods, heading toward that lovely bridge. Look at all the trilliums – how lovely it must have been in May!

Check out the drifts of ‘Ebony Night’ black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus) and dwarf goatsbeard (Aruncus aethusifolius). What beautiful textures here — I need another hour, at least. Sadly, there’s just enough time to turn around and head out again.

I pass the fun, leopard-patterned chairs that sit on the great lawn.

Gazing up through the sweeping border beneath the Gravel Garden, the main house looms ahead.

Just one glance back at the brilliant combination of ‘Flamenco Mix’ red-hot pokers (Kniphofia uvaria) with ‘Lucy Ball’ giant alliums. More Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ here, plus white oxeye daisies. Genius! Thank you, Lisa Roper.

On the way up to the house, I note the sinuous, maze-like Serpentine, intended to celebrate the beauty of agricultural crops. This summer, it’s planted with waving, swishing – and, yes, beautiful – winter rye (Secale cereale).

And now I’m at the back of the main house, once the home of Adolph Rosengarten Sr. and his wife Christine. Earlier in spring, this wildflower lawn would have been filled with daffodils, which are now ripening in the long grass.

Let’s take a walk along the terrace, past the clay urn draped with ‘Buttercup’ golden ivy (Hedera helix), and all the other brilliant, gold-leafed plants that light up this space even on a cloudy day. And don’t they look superb with the mauve alliums?

Each of the many urns and pots on the terrace is exquisitely designed. This one features a simple mix of variegated Japanese sedge (Carex oshimensis ‘Evergold’), Winter Orchid wallflowers (Erysimum) and Side Show Copper Apricot African daisies (Osteospermum). The gold-leafed shrub behind is a ‘Golden Sunshine’ willow (Salix sachalinensis).

The swimming pool looks so cool and welcoming. In fact, I did take a refreshing swim in this pool on a hot summer evening several years ago, when Chanticleer hosted the awards dinner at the annual symposium of the Garden Writers Association. They even provided bathing suits for those of us who’d forgotten ours at home! What fun (there might have been a little wine consumed…..) It was later in the season then, so the wonderful roses like ‘Dr. Huey’ and pink ‘Eglantyne’ here weren’t in bloom.

Big agaves (A. americana) pick up the aqua colour of the water and the copper rooftop of the poolhouse.

Each end of the swimming pool terrace features delphiniums and other classic English-garden-style perennials.

But it’s closing time, finally, and I float back to my car on a lovely cloud of euphoria. Together, Adolph Rosengarten Jr.and the board and staff have succeeded brilliantly in making Chanticleer feel like the most welcoming of private homes – with the best gardens ever. Thank you!

Chanticleer is open 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. The garden is also open on Friday evenings until 8:00 p.m. from May through Labor Day. The 2014 season begins on April 2nd and ends on November 2nd. Check the website for more.

Touring Chanticleer – Part 1

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Janet

Of all the public gardens I’ve visited around the world (and that list is very long), there is one that rises gracefully above all the rest. Not for the property, though this Pennsylvania estate is second to none. Not for the labels and signage, because there aren’t any (more on that later). And not for the gift shop, because this garden doesn’t need one; it is a gift in itself. There is no Victorian carpet bedding, no rows of annuals being trialled, no visitor’s tram, no snack bar. There are simply extraordinarily creative plantings, superbly rendered designs, intellectual interpretations of the landscape’s unique sense of place, and excellence all round. This is Chanticleer Garden, located in the hamlet of Wayne in Radnor Township, a half-hour drive from Philadelphia.

Earlier this June, I spent a charmed day wandering the hills and rills and valleys of Chanticleer. I brought a lunch from my hotel, but hours later had to remind myself to sit down in one of the many colourful chairs to eat it, so worried was I that I might miss a garden or two before I had to leave.

Chanticleer was originally the 1913 country home of Adolph G. Rosengarten Sr. (b.1870), whose grandfather George, the 21-year old scion of a German banking family, had founded a successful chemical business in Philadelphia in 1823 that produced, among other products, the anti-malarial drug quinine. Though not on the vast scale of Longwood, the home and garden another wealthy chemical magnate, Pierre Du Pont, had built 6 years earlier in nearby Wilmington, Delaware, Chanticleer took its place as one of the fabled mansions along the Main Line rail route, where Philadelphia society went to escape the summer heat. Perhaps reflecting his sizable investment, Adolph Sr. named his new home after the fictional Chanteclere from the William Makepeace Thackeray novel The Newcomes, a grand house that was “mortgaged up to the very castle windows”. In French, Chanticleer means rooster, and that literary allusion is seen in the many original rooster statues and motifs around the estate, left, and also in the rooster combs in California sculptor Marcia Donahue’s playfully suggestive ceramic bamboo culms.

In 1927, the year that the Rosengartens merged their company with Merck & Co., Adolph Sr., with his wife Christine, son Adolph Jr. (b.1906) and daughter Emily (b.1910), made Chanticleer their full-time residence. In time he built houses for both children as wedding gifts and it is at Emily’s house near the gate (now the garden’s administrative building) where my tour begins.

In the kitchen courtyard that acts as an entrance to the garden is a collection of beautifully planted containers

Pass through the gate from the kitchen courtyard and you reach the charming Teacup Garden, a courtyard centred by a formal parterre set around the cup-shaped, Italianate fountain that gives the space its name. Gardener Dan Benarcik, who oversees the Teacup and the Tennis Garden below the house, has described the feeling he wants to convey here as “lush formal”, maintaining the geometry of formal design but using lush tropical plants in the beds and containers. Though it’s early in the season for these summer heat-lovers, you can appreciate the brilliant foliage choices, including the gold-toned bromeliad Aechmea blanchetiana and the ‘Black Coral’ taros (Alocasia). Formality is emphasized with the four standard silver willows (Salix alba ‘Sericea’) in the corners.

At the other end of the house, windmill palms (Trachycarpus fortunei) in gorgeous glazed pots stand sentinel in front of French doors. The smaller pots contain golden scheffleras (S. actinophylla ‘Amate Soleil’). At right is a split-leaf philodendron (P. selloum ‘Hope’).

Now let’s head around Emily’s house to the front so we can make our way down to the gardens below. Gaze up as you head for the stairs: those brilliant chartreuse boughs of the ‘Frisia’ black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) will give you a little clue as to the delicious colour sensibilities ahead.

On the sweep of lawn flanking the long borders sit a pair of purple chairs under a huge jack oak tree (Quercus alba x Q. montana). Colourful chairs are a staple at Chanticleer; set in the most picturesque places, they provide a little rest while offering a good photo opportunity.

The long borders feature a purple-blue-yellow-gold colour theme, seen below in combinations using variegated ‘Axminster Gold’ comfrey (Symphytum x uplandicum) with yellow phlomis (P. russeliana) on the left; at right is Allium cristophii with ‘Gigantea’ rusty foxglove (Digitalis ferruginea), blue Italian alkanet (Anchusa azurea) and phlomis in the background. The long borders and parking lot gardens are overseen by gardener Doug Croft, who greets me later and helps with a few plant id’s.

What was once the staircase leading to the tennis court in the Rosengartens’ time is now a dramatic, sedum-topped entrance to the Tennis Court Garden. Perhaps the best description of what lies ahead is “formal but informal”, with five flower beds planted in a profuse mix of perennials, bulbs and shrubs.

The colours in the Tennis Court Garden in June are predominantly pink, purple, yellow and chartreuse, the latter seen in the ‘Ogon’ spirea (Spiraea thunbergii) in the middle and the ‘Hearts of Gold‘ redbud (Cercis canadensis) at left. You also see the luscious Itoh hybrid peony ‘Bartzella’ and a few spikes of the popular salmon-orange ‘Illumination Flame’ foxglove (Digiplexis). In the background, ‘New Dawn’ and ‘Dr. Van Fleet’ climbing roses wreath the attractive pergola.

Coppicing (cutting back each spring) is used at Chanticleer in order to harness certain trees for their attractive foliage while maintaining them at a shrubby border size, such as the large-leafed princess tree (Paulonia tomentosa) seen here. Beyond is the brilliant foliage of Cercis canadensis ‘Hearts of Gold’. Also shown are ‘Caradonna’ meadow sage (Salvia nemorosa) and an allium (likely ‘Ambassador’).

Simple combinations can be very striking, especially using bulbs like the summer alliums, which offer a big hit of spherical purple, against a shrub like the Magic Carpet spirea (Spiraea x bumbalda ‘Walbuma’).

Comfy, foldable chairs sit in front of the rock wall behind the Tennis Court Garden. Here, the yellow-blue scheme continues the colour theme of the long borders nearby. Yellow fumitory (Corydalis lutea) and goldenmoss stonecrop (Sedum acre) predominate here, along with various blue or purple campanulas, centaureas and perennial geraniums.

At the bottom of the hill just before the woods is the enchanting Cut Flower Garden with its rebar-grapevine arches festooned with clematis (red ‘Niobe’ is shown). The arches provide structure throughout the year and draw the eye through the four quadrants overflowing with a riotous mix of annuals, bulbs and perennials meant to evoke an old-fashioned cottage garden. Though the annuals will hit their stride with summer’s heat, here we see some of the June cast of characters: biennial purple sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis), ‘Filigran’ oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) and peach ‘Spring Valley Hybrids’ foxtail lilies (Eremurus).

Rich-purple ‘Sarastro’ bellflower (Campanula) is joined by the zingy pink orbs of ‘Fireworks’ gomphrena and orange calendula.

Below, Emma Seniuk, the gardener for the cut flower and vegetable gardens, works with David Mattern to build a sturdy structure she calls the “cantaloupe tree”. All the gardeners at Chanticleer are encouraged to create the furnishings, accessories and even bridges for the gardens in their charge. Emma also spent 18 months in a student placement at England’s Great Dixter Garden, benefiting from a special scholarship in the name of Great Dixter’s renowned founder (and superlative flower gardener), the late Christopher Lloyd.

Here is the charming vegetable garden, surrounded by its rustic paling fence.

With its quadrants separated by paths, the garden suggests a French potager but the vegetables are planted within them in very American-style rows. Some of the harvest is used by the garden, but much is donated to those in need.

Now we are heading into Chanticleer’s newest “garden”, Bell’s Woodland. Opened in spring 2012 and planted with wildflowers, rhododendrons, redbuds and other shade-lovers under the mature native forest canopy, it is still being developed but offers a shady, naturalistic contrast to many of the Chanticleer’s other gardens. Don’t you love this fabulous “fallen tree” entrance fabricated by the Bell’s Woodland gardener Przemyslaw Walczak!

Bell’s Woodland celebrates plants of the Eastern North American forest and features mature natives like this American beech (Fagus grandifolia) with its boughs overhanging the path. The path, incidentally, is comprised partly of recycled shredded tires.

Towering tulip poplars (Liriodendron tulipifera) are a feature of the woods.

And, of course, chairs are set around so visitors can enjoy the peaceful surroundings….

….interrupted only by the song of birds.

Though the vast majority of plants here are native, a lovely collection of clematis has been established to add a little color to the pathways. The pink-flowered plants adjacent to the path are Phlox ovata.

The woods are cut through by a creek called Bell’s Run. At one time, this old water wheel pumped water from the creek to the Rosengartens’ swimming pool up the hill. The white-flowered tree is Chinese dogwood (Cornus kousa).

A chair under a black walnut tree (Juglans nigra) overlooks Bell’s Run creek.

Orange globe flower (Trollius spp.) pairs with a pink meadow phlox along the path.

Do you know what this is in the clovers and grasses? I was puzzled by a fern that didn’t seem to be growing yet. That’s because it wasn’t growing. Instead……

….it was an ingenious (and very naturalistic) way to mark the edges of the camassia meadows using the old fertile fronds of ostrich ferns (Matteucia struthiopteris), so the gardeners would know where to mow without cutting down the ripening leaves of the camassia that were in bloom a few weeks earlier.

This massed planting of white astilbe does something quite wonderful when viewed from the other side.

It forms a fluffy white horizontal to catch the eye and backlight the silhouette of the tree.

Here is a small array of ferns from Bell’s Woodland: lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina) with kousa dogwood, left; royal fern (Osmunda regalis) with a trillium leaf, top right; and a rain-splashed maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum) at lower right.

We come out of the woods near the old orchard where the daffodil leaves are ripening in the long grasses, and we’ve finished the first half of our tour. If your legs are still working, why not join me for the second half?

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Tag Archives: Chanticleer Garden

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