The Garden Conservancy focus on Sunday, June 24 from 10 – 4 are the gardens of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and nearby Columbia County, New York.
In Sheffield, Massachusetts, pictured below, visit 1391 Barnum Street. The first garden you see while walking up the driveway is the “Rabbit Garden,” so named for the wooden rabbit in its midst. This chainsaw-carved animal is one of many on the property. Under the crabapple tree is a primrose garden. Walking up the stairs toward the house gives you your first view of the pond and waterfall area. From the deck, a series of stone steps and landings leads down past a rock garden to the patio and pond, home to goldfish and frogs. The patio fronts a mixed border of perennials, shrubs, and trees. From the screened-in porch the pond and waterfall can be seen and heard. The woodland garden behind the house, with its winding paths and many shade plantings, is a cool retreat. The garden on the pool side of the house has a variety of butterfly- and hummingbird-friendly plantings.
Travel to Texas Hill at 411 Texas Hill Road in Hillsdale, New York. The garden began ten years ago, after the owners completed the restoration of their newly purchased house, having left behind a Germantown house and garden after twenty-five years. There was no garden to speak of—just a few peonies, rhododendron, lots of Vinca and Epimedium, and a few sad tulips. But the rocky ridge-line property had much to offer: excellent big views, interesting terrains, old and newer stone walls and patios, established trails through the woods, and a beautifully sighted spring-fed pond. Accentuating these assets has been the over-riding goal from the outset. However, the elevation (Zone 4), brutal exposure, deer herds, and the terribly rocky soil presented unusually difficult challenges. Initially they created two protected courtyards, using existing structures and new fencing, and planting beds with perennials and small scrubs and dwarf trees. Beyond these early beds and courtyards, they planted large groups of evergreen trees (hemlock, pine, spruce) for visual variety and wind protection. Around them they made island beds of so-called deer-resistant plants. Within three years, after a particularly devastating deer attack one harsh winter, we were forced to enclose four acres with an eight-foot deer fence and entry grate. This move, along with tons of imported topsoil and a new Kubota tractor, dramatically transformed the “gardening” into “landscaping.”
“Whatever works” is the mantra for plant material. They brought a few key favorites from their Germantown garden: a smoke bush hedge, a large Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick, and a red Japanese maple. They transplanted loads of local ferns and wild geraniums from the roadside, barberry and elderberry bushes from the woods, Monarda from the meadows, and Hosta, Aralia, and Astiboidies from neighbors. They added shrubs and grasses for foliage and form: willows, Spirea, ninebark, hydrangeas, Viburnum, low-spreading evergreens, and two huge split-leaf Japanese maples for the entry. The big picture is that they’ve tried to achieve a blended balance between a formal density near the house and a more open naturalistic or wild feeling radiating out toward the pond, the lawns, the meadows, the woods, and the view.
The next garden, Helen Bodian’s in Millerton, New York, can be found by calling 1-888-842-2442 or by going to one of the other gardens and obtaining directions on the day of the Open Day. The Millerton setting is a broad landscape of hayfield and meadows crested by a forested ridge. Within it are four self-contained gardens established sequentially over twenty-five years, sited at the base of the surrounding slopes. The gardens, made at different times and in different styles, are not entirely adjacent, so a network of paths connects them with one another and then out to a pond and the larger landscape. The first garden, a rock garden, was spurred by construction of a modern addition to the house. This garden presented several design challenges at the start: first, scaling the rocks and plantings both to a shale hill suspended above and to the elongated house addition, and then, breaking up the linear view from the house. The solution was to use massed shrubs and small trees at the rim and to allow some to wander down into the garden area. Not a conventional rock garden, it is instead a place for small perennials to flourish and show their colors. Next, across a dirt road, was a quasi-classic, rather romantic garden in the form of an open square framed on two parallel sides by hornbeam hedges and planted with crabapples, ornamental shrubs, and perennials. A greenhouse and modernist walled garden followed, with a small square pool and rectilinear gravel areas for summer staging of potted tender plants from the greenhouse. The vegetable garden came last and with it an opportunity to make a striking and colorful composition every year, using kale, amaranth, and cardoon as structure and annual flowers for color.
Next, visit the Landscape of Linda B. Horn at 5015 County Road 7, Spencertown, New York. The restoration of the landscape has been the goal for the fifteen years of living here after a move from Chicago. There are four restored ecosystems: wetlands, waterfall, domestic area of native grasses, and woodland. The last section of restoration was started last fall with eliminating dead trees and then new seeding. This year goldenrod was weed-whacked and new trees planted. The landscape was featured in the September issue of New York Cottages & Gardens with a five-page spread (images are available). Native restoration workshops have been held here through the Columbia Land Conservancy, Spencertown Academy, and Berkshire Botanical Garden. PLEASE NOTE: GOOGLE MAPS DOES NOT SHOW THE CORRECT LOCATION FOR THIS GARDEN, PLEASE FOLLOW WRITTEN DIRECTIONS found at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/open-days/garden-directory/landscape-of-linda-b-horn.
