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: Lisa Roper

May at Chanticleer-Part 2

Touring Chanticleer – Part 2

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