Sunday, 31 May 2009
Open Garden Days: Hortulus Farm
Day Two of the Garden Conservancy's Open Days in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and once again I saved the largest garden for last.
Nestled in the Pennsylvania countryside, at 100 acres Hortulus Farm is the remnant of a 1690 William Penn land grant. The classic Bucks County stone house was begun in 1723, with the third and last section completed in 1797. The property became the homestead of the Thompson-Warner families, and was a dairy farm well into the 20th Century. Following the Great Depression the property was sold for a pittance at sheriff's sale. Greatly diminished, it passed through several owners before Renny Reynolds and Jack Staub acquired Hortulus Farm in 1980. Their restoration of the historic property and the development of the gardens began that same year.
Today there are pastoral woodland walks that intersect a lush stream garden. Hundres of thousands of bulbs - daffodils, narcissus, and a woodland hillside filled with bluebells mingle with native dogwoods and Delaware Valley white azaleas to welcome Spring. Later in the season and on through summer imposing perennial mingle in herbaceous borders. Applied with a painterly touch, long-lasting displays are made by trees and shrubs with leaves in colors other than green. There's a pond with water fowl, pool and fountain gardens, and a geometrically formal kitchen garden. It's a good thing I'm wearing comfortable shoes; I'm in for some serious walking.
My visit begins as I descend several stone steps and into the shade of a sunken woodland path.
Its turfed surface is a simple contrast to the steep banks, simple furnished with pachysandra,
embellished with stately fronds of ostrich ferns and shaggy barked trunks of river birch.
The hillside is stabilized with pachysandra, embellished with ostrich ferns and river birches.
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Dang nab it, they're knotting up the daffodil leaves here, too.
Renny Reynolds makes wonderful use of foliage shapes, playing
the bold, simple shape of Hosta 'Sum and Substance' against
the lacy form of an equally statuesque fern. This is the basic, first level
of designing with foliage, something I repeat again and again in
"Consider the Leaf: Garden Design with Foliage", published
by Timber Press in 2003. (You can order a personalized, autographed
copy, just Contact Me for details.)
Once the combination of pattern and shape have been chosen, it is possible
to move on to the second level, that of colors other than green. Here, see how
Renny has again chosen hosta and fern, but this time it is a hosta with a
creamy-white edge to the leaf, and silvery fronds of Japanese painted fern,
Athyrium nipponicum 'Pictum', with delightful results.
Some parts of Hortulus Farm are woodland. Others are formal statements.
Then there are the magical fairytale moments, such as the reflected image of
an unsubstantial white gazebo duplicated in the black mirror of the pond.
Taking a few quiet minutes to jot some thoughts in her journal,
a visitor relaxes on a convenient seat in the shade of a stately tree.
The Mahonia must have been magnificently in flower back in January.
Just look at the heavy set of berries. Did you know they're edible?
I've found them quite suitable for a delectable jelly with lovely wild flavor.
Sometimes Hortulus Farm provides a tightly focused vignette, and then
opens up into sweeping vistas. Perennials would be lost at such a distance,
so Renny uses trees and shrubs with leaves of copper, bronze, or purple
to draw one's eye and paint color on the landscape.
In the previous image these two plants look tiny in the distance.
Not agave, but two huge cream-and-green Furcraea stand sentinel.
It is an awkward chore to bring them out late each Spring, then haul
them back under cover before frost. Not merely weight, but rather
what the RHS Index of Garden Plants calls their "sword-shaped,
usually rigid, spinose-serrate" leaves." In other words, objections
to disturbance. Sure look good, though, out by the arbor for summer.
That same vista includes copper, bronze, purple leaves seen here with better detail.
Weeping copper beech, Fagus sylvatica forma pendula purpurea anchors the scene
on the left, while left and right are balanced by a purple leaved cultivar of smoke tree,
Cotinus coggygria. In the foreground a copper-leaved barberry, Berberis thunbergii
possibly the cultuvar 'Atropurpurea', and plum-colored leaves on a perennial on the right.
Color and contrast, and not a flower in sight. It's a good foundation for garden design.
An island bed with golden foliage: golden catalpa, Catalpa bignoniodes 'Aurea',
paired up with carpeting Lysmachia nummularia 'Aurea' and
anchored in place with a plump terra cotta urn for an embellishment.
You have to walk to reach this water music, away from any buildings. A simple pool,
marvellous fountain, with water splashing in the sunlight. Wonderful.
Renny Reynolds, with peonies.