A Visit to Andrew Bunting’s Belvidere

Posted on November 29, 2023 by Janet

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.

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.

May at Chanticleer-Part 2

Posted on July 30, 2022 by Janet

When we paused our tour of Chanticleer Garden outside Philadelphia in my previous blog, we were just leaving the shade-dappled woods and the creek garden. Let’s keep going now toward the ponds, where I stood behind one of the garden’s many cypress trees with a view all the way up the hill to the house, which you can just see at the top.

May 23rd is early for aquatic plants, so not much was in bloom yet….

… but the big koi swam toward me, perhaps hoping for a little fish food. I loved seeing the copper iris (I. fulva) at the shore, a native of southern swamps and wetlands.

Nearby was the carnivorous yellow pitcherplant (Sarracenia flava).

Yellow Thermopsis villosa was in bloom behind the big, bobbing heads of Allium giganteum. By mid-summer, the ponds are filled with water lilies and lotuses.

But I am a flower-lover at heart, and the gorgeous cottage garden display in front of the Arbor was calling my name.

The pink-flowered plant is showy evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa), a perennial wildflower native to the rocky prairies, meadows and open woodlands of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and neighbouring states.

One of the horticultural surprises at Chanticleer is the inclusion of tender plants, such as bromeliads and succulents, in the garden beds. This striking combination of tender Agave parryi (in a pot), Clematis Abilene and pink showy evening primrose caught my eye.

And I had never seen hyacinth squill (Scilla hyacinthoides) used so effectively in a northeastern garden!

This sunny, textural area at Chanticleer adjacent to the ponds and arbor is called the Gravel Garden, and it is the domain of my friend, horticulturist Lisa Roper.

One of the longest-serving employees, since 1990, she has been in charge of this particular garden and the neighbouring Ruin since 2013. She also does much of the photography for Chanticleer. We marked the occasion of my visit with a lovely photo, made by Chanticleer’s young Irish garden intern, Michael McGowan.

I first met Lisa back in 2014, when I photographed her trying out a penstemon in the mix of plants in a bed in the Gravel Garden. She works hard to get the mix of colours, textures and bloom times right.

And in 2018, she spoke at the Toronto Botanical Garden about this remarkable space at Chanticleer.

Back to the Gravel Garden, by late May the tulips and daffodils had finished blooming but there were still interesting bulbs to carry the eye through the garden, like the fuchsia-pink Italian gladioli (Gladiolus italicus) to the left of the gently ascending stone steps….

…. with its beautiful markings,

….. as well as foxtail lilies (Eremurus robustus) just beginning to flower…..

….. and, of course, the hyacinth squill (Scilla hyacinthoides).

Although the site is gently sloped, there are flat places along the journey through the garden…..

… and even a comfy place to sit, if you fancy a rather firm (concrete) cushion! That’s false hydrangea-vine (Schizophragma hydrangeoides) passing itself off as a fluffy, green throw on the sofa.

The spicy scent of the Dianthus ‘Mountain Mist’ was divine on that warm May Day. The orange flower is Papaver rupifragum with dark-purple columbines (Aquilegia vulgaris) to the left.

There are numerous stone troughs set along the path. This one contained Aloe maculata with ‘Elijah Blue’ fescue (Festuca glauca).

Century plant (Agave americana) was a strong focal point in a sea of self-seeding Orlaya grandiflora. This lacy, white-flowered annual is used extensively at Chanticleer.

Old-fashioned Italian bugloss (Anchusa azurea ‘Dropmore Blue’) was adding a vivid blue touch.

Even though the lighting is harsh, I loved this contrast: orange Spanish poppy (Papaver rupifragum) with Veronica austriaca ssp. teucrium ‘Royal Blue’ with purple and mauve columbines.

At the top of the Gravel Garden, we looked towards the wall of the Ruin Garden, which is also Lisa Roper’s responsibility. The salmon pink flowers are red valerian (Centranthus ruber ‘Coccineus’.) The shrub with white flowers at right is Chinese fringetree (Chionanthus retusus).

The Ruin is on the footprint of Adolph Rosengarten Jr’s (1905-90) former home, Minder House. (I wrote about “Dolph” in my first blog on Chanticleer in 2014.) With his sister Emily’s house serving as Chanticleer’s administration building and the main house in which Adolph Rosengarten Sr. and his wife Christine lived still standing, his house was deemed a better site for an evocative garden, so it was razed in 1999. Landscape architect Mara Baird created three stone-walled garden rooms. Here we see the library, with its fireplace.

Here’s the view from inside the Ruin Garden.

The succulents in the wall pockets are Agave attenuata ‘Ray of Light’. Climbing hydrangea (H. anomala subsp. petiolaris) is on the wall at left.

Although it was getting warm for the spring violas, I loved the tousled look of the floral mantel. The tree at left is the snakebark maple Acer davidii.

I really liked this bluestone trough with its exquisite plants: Agave mitis, Alluaudia procera, Aloe maculata, Echeveria ‘Perle Von Nurnberg’, Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii, Euphorbia tirucallii, Festuca glauca ‘Elijah Blue’ and Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi. I learned that by looking up the Plant List for the Ruin Garden!

San Francisco sculptor Marcia Donahue created the floating faces in the “Pool Room”.

I would love to have had the time to explore the Minder Woods beyond these pond cypress trees (Taxodium distichum var. imbricatum) as well as the Asian Woods I’d explored years earlier, but time was fleeting and a long drive north to Corning NY lay ahead of us.

So we headed down the slope toward the Great Lawn past this ebullient display of Allium ‘Globemaster’, oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) and meadow sage (Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’).

Further on, there was a chartreuse expanse of dyer’s woad (Isatis tinctoria)….

….. and the ice-blue amsonias that look so lovely in spring and again in autumn when the foliage turns golden-yellow.

In the wonderful book “The Art of Gardening” (Timber Press 2015) written by director Bill Thomas and the gardeners of Chanticleer and photographed by my friend Rob Cardillo, it says: “Spouses dragged here by the family garden-lover find we aren’t stuffy, and it’s actually not a bad place for a walk.” I would add that my husband Doug thought it was a great place to rest and enjoy the view after that walk!

Just beyond on the Great Lawn looking out over the Serpentine was another comfy chair in cool green.

Each year, the Serpentine features a different agricultural crop; this year it was red spring wheat (Triticum aestivum ‘MN-Torgy’).

Climbing the slope towards the house was a much more gentle and beautiful process than my last visit in 2014, with the new elevated walkway built the following year. I could have spent hours meandering up this curved steel walkway with its fabulous plantings.

Have you ever seen so many columbines (Aquilegia canadensis)? Here they’re interplanted with ferns and many other perennials.

On the left is the honeysuckle Lonicera sempervirens ‘Major Wheeler’, on the right yellow Lonicera reticulata ‘Kintzley’s Ghost’.

Part-way up the elevated walkway was the Apple House, which had once been used by the Rosengartens to store fruit from their orchard.

I was surprised to see crossvine (Bignonia capreolata) growing on the walkway. It would certainly not be hardy in Toronto but perhaps it overwinters safely in Philadelphia.

Clematis montana var. grandiflora grew in a pretty tumble near the top.

Marcia Donahue’s cheeky rooster sculptures greeted me as I headed towards the house.

As always, the main house terrace was beautiful with its repeated chartreuse foliage and accents in teal-blue and lemon. The chairs were designed and built by Douglas Randolph.

As with all things Chanticleer, a visiting plant-lover could spend hours in each garden, just exploring the inspired plant choices. This is Japanese roof iris (I. tectorum); at rear is a pollarded Salix sachalinensis ‘Golden Sunshine’ with alliums, likely ‘Gladiator’ and Delphinium grandiflorum ‘Diamonds Blue’ peeking out from behind.

Behind the house is the swimming pool and pool house with plantings chosen to play off the colours of the water and copper roof. (In full sun at midday, this garden was hard to capture, but you can see the agaves, roses, etc. in my 2014 blog.)

As a meadow gardener, the Flowery Lawn is one of my favourite places, with its enchanting, ever-changing cast of floral characters. You can see the bulb foliage now ripening in the midst of the purple ‘Gladiator’ alliums and biennial dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis). Here and there are scarlet ‘Beauty of Livermere’ Oriental poppies (Papaver orientale) and ‘Apricot Beauty’ foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) with white orlaya and cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris). In summer, there’s anise hyssop and bachelor buttons here, part of a season-long parade of plants that enjoy this crowded scene.

Foxgloves and delphiniums (‘Magic Fountains Dark Blue Bee’) were at peak perfection in the east bed. Note the fennel and yellow snapdragons planted for summer bloom.

As we walked toward the parking lot to resume our road trip, I spotted this arresting combination – one of thousands of brilliant, carefully-considered pairings at Chanticleer. Look how the autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora) echoes the centre of the Itoh peony ‘Sequestered Sunshine’. It was just the last of countless reminders of why Chanticleer remains my favourite garden in North America.

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.

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Tag Archives: Gravel Garden

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