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Hilltop home’s garden makes national magazine, open to public

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The sprawling hilltop gardens of Bill and Ginger Baxter’s home in Fountain City are featured in the March 2012 issue of Southern Living Magazine. Called “Mountain High,” the article features eight pages of color photos revealing the couple’s gardens perched on top of Black Oak Ridge.

But you don’t need to buy the magazine to see it. The Baxter gardens are open now through Apr. 30 for the Dogwood Arts Festival. There is no charge to visit.


“We have opened the gardens for the past five years or so for the festival,” said Ginger Baxter, who estimates about 300 people will drive through the 15 acres of gardens on the 50-acre property. “Some people bring older relatives and just drive through. Some people get out sketch pads and draw. A lot of people bring their cameras. People have been very respectful of us, and I think that speaks well for Dogwood and its history.”

Ginger Baxter said she enjoys the gardens, but they’re Bill Baxter’s passionate hobby.

“My job was to plan and design it,” said Bill Baxter, who is not formally trained in landscape design. “I just read,” he said. He has also hired several Knoxville landscape architects over the years, including UT professor Gerry Menendez, Eastwood Landscaping designer Mark Smithson, and Willow Ridge Garden Center designer Robert Smiddy.

“We’ve had a lot of Fountain City talent involved,” he said.

The favorite part of the gardens for him is the Dogwood Ramble, a collection of about 300 dogwood trees and shrubs in at least 30 varieties. There’s a winding gravel path through it, a creek and places to stop and sit.

The home of Bill and Ginger Baxter on Sam Cooper Lane which is featured in this month's Southern Living and is open for the Dogwood Arts Festival.

Photo by Michael Patrick, copyright © 2012

The home of Bill and Ginger Baxter on Sam Cooper Lane which is featured in this month’s Southern Living and is open for the Dogwood Arts Festival.


“In East Tennessee, the dogwood is the star,” Bill Baxter said. “My mom was involved in the festival, and I just realized there are all kinds of dogwoods, why not feature those? It just makes sense.”

Developing the property has been a dream of Bill Baxter’s for years. As a teenager he lived just a mile away, and he mowed the property for its former owners.

“He used to say I’m going to live here someday, and I’d say, right,” said Ginger Baxter. In 1977, he bought the house and the 6.2 acres surrounding it. The couple was married there, and they gradually acquired more acreage.

As a successful businessman in Knoxville (he is chairman of Holston Gases), Bill Baxter prefers not to disclose the expense of the gardens. “For me, it’s a long term, worthwhile endeavor,” he said.

He does hire much-needed help, including full-time groundskeeper Marty Everett. “We’ve had a groundskeeper about 15 years, but Marty’s been with us three years. He’s just terrific,” he said.

The gates to the maze at the home of Bill and Ginger Baxter on Sam Cooper Lane which is featured in this month's Southern Living and is open for the Dogwood Arts Festival.

Photo by Michael Patrick, copyright © 2012

The gates to the maze at the home of Bill and Ginger Baxter on Sam Cooper Lane which is featured in this month’s Southern Living and is open for the Dogwood Arts Festival.


The plants themselves are hardy and native to East Tennessee. In fact, the Southern Living article focused on how drought tolerant most of the ground cover plantings are. A sprinkler system in the dogwood garden is just an insurance policy, in case of drought, the Baxters said.

The Baxter property includes six separate garden areas open to the public this month: The White Garden, in which everything blooms white; The Ellipse, featuring a huge water feature; the Lotus Pond and 8-foot tall Maze; The Dogwood Ramble, which features 30 types of dogwood trees and bushes; The Azalea Garden, which also has rhododendron and camellia; and the latest addition, The Butterfly Garden, designed with plants to attract butterflies.

So is Bill Baxter finished designing gardens?

“Oh, no,” he said with a laugh.

“A painter paints the finished product, and there it is. But in landscape design, you think about what the painting will look like twenty years from now, because you’re planting all little plants. Then you step back and watch it grow, and twenty years later, there it is.”

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Albright garden a rediscovered treasure 500 VINE

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The City of Scranton has its share of structures designed by famous architects. There is the Scranton Cultural Center, the work of Raymond Hood who also designed Rockefeller Center in New York City, and the former Scranton family estate which was designed by Russell Sturgis, famous for Farnham Hall at Yale University.

What many residents don’t know is that Scranton has an outdoor space designed by the man responsible for New York’s Central Park, the White House grounds, and the Biltmore Estate, Frederick Law Olmsted.

The current grounds of the Albright Memorial Library was designed by Olmsted, who is widely regarded as the father of modern landscape architecture, but 99 years separated Olmsted’s design from its complete realization.

In 1893, when the Albright Building was constructed, Olmsted was hired to draw up a plan for the grounds on the northern, eastern, and southern sides of the building. The original garden plan called for almost 1,800 shrubs, perennials and trees and was contained on half an acre of land. Plants included scarlet honeysuckle, azaleas, Japanese honeysuckle, periwinkle, and rose of Sharon. The garden was completed in 1895.

However, the garden languished due to several factors. In the 1920s, the south garden was eliminated due to the building of the Masonic Temple, which shaded the once sunny area. By the 1950s, the east garden had been paved over for a parking area. The remaining green areas bore little resemblance to Olmsted’s original plan. As time passed, the Olmsted garden faded from memory.

The story continued in 1992. According to an article published in the April 2001 issue of Atlantic Monthly, the Lackawanna Architectural Heritage Association, while preparing for the centenary of the building, came upon a single rendering of the original garden and its plantings.

The next piece of the puzzle fell into place when Jack Finnerty, director of the Albright Memorial Library, discovered a bill from Olmsted’s firm showing payment for the plants, confirming that the garden was implemented.

The library received a $28,000 urban forestry grant from the U.S. Forestry Service and was able to proceed. The library worked with Thomas J. McLane Associates to restore the garden, which was no easy task.

One of the biggest challenges was identifying the plants on the list, as they were written in Latin and the terminology was not always clear. Some of the plants were no longer easily available and others are now considered noxious weeds. In these cases, some substitutions had to be made. The project was completed in time for the spring of 2001.

Visitors to the Albright Memorial Library during the growing season will find the grounds much as Olmsted intended. Plants are used in an asymmetrical way, as Olmsted eschewed classic landscapes where orderly shapes and straight lines were the norm.

He is famous for incorporating large open spaces ringed by greenery, which is evidenced on the building’s north grounds, near the entrance, where rhododendrons, mountain laurel, bog rosemary, and creeping mahonia are disbursed between plantings of azaleas.

On the eastern side, what was once a parking lot now contains American redbud, Meidiland roses, and Japanese snowbell viburnum.

While projects that restore great old buildings to their former grandeur receive attention and praise, the grounds of the Albright Memorial Library are, in their own quiet way, one of the city’s greatest lost and found treasures. Even now, well ahead of the prime growing season, it is worth a visit as the red bud is beginning to bloom.

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How to judge a garden

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The same rules cannot be applied to every garden. A Capability Brown landscape
is all about large-scale composition, sweeps of tree planting and bucolic
panoramas. An Arts and Crafts garden, by contrast, is all about hedged
compartments, restricted views and complex, often colour-based planting,
usually quite separate from the surrounding landscape.

Common to all good gardens, however, is a sense of integrity or coherence that
allows all the different elements to work together as a composition. A
little background research into a garden’s creator, and the period in which
the garden was developed or changed, can help you analyse how it works.

The role of movement

Analysis should start as soon as you enter a garden. The designer will have
considered some sort of progress. This is known as sequential design, in
which each of the spaces you encounter will be related to each other. The
threshold or division between each space is an essential part of the overall
composition, revealing views and allowing the garden and its various
contrasts or characteristics to be read in a controlled way.

Arts and Crafts designers used hedges or walls to give structure and order to
the garden. The result is often formal, introverted and controlling. In
later Modernist gardens, hedges were used as sculptural blocks. They allowed
spaces, planting and design ideas to flow together, creating a more dynamic
but less defined landscape.

In the former, the pattern of the garden is clear, while in the latter the
pattern has to be deciphered and the best views or planting combinations
debated.

For the uninitiated this can be confusing and in some cases irritating. For
example, there is no point visiting Frederick Gibberd’s garden, Marsh Lane,
near Harlow, if you are looking for refreshing flower planting, because
there is very little. This does not make it a bad garden, merely a different
one. It emerges invisibly from its surroundings and creates mysterious
spaces around its many sculptures, full of atmospheric spirit.

Materials and structure

The choice of materials will tie a composition together. The classic approach
is to use locally sourced stone or brick. Edwardian architect and garden
designer Edwin Lutyens was a dab hand at this, which allows his greatest
gardens to nestle into their wider context so beautifully.

Other gardens will use imported materials. This is more often the case in
urban settings, where local character can be lost in the mêlée of
cosmopolitan life. Many visitors simply say “I don’t like that”, when faced
with innovation. This is their prerogative, of course, but can suggest a
lack of wider thinking. Materials are usually chosen for a reason: to link
with an overall concept or idea, or they may have been salvaged and
available for free. Why not discuss this with the owner or gardener and find
out more?

Planting design

Many gardens are little more than collections of plants. These can indeed be
objects of wonder but, strangely, few plant collections are well designed.
Design is about coherence and consistency, structure and the integration of
ideas, so we need to look at how plants relate together.

Again, there is room for great variety here. The ecological planting of the
London Wetland Centre, in Barnes, for example, has a very different
philosophy to the decorative splendour of Sissinghurst.

There is great promise in the work of our leading university researchers (the
“Sheffield School”) yet little finds its way into the gardens we visit.
James Hitchmough’s prairie planting at Wisley is tucked away in the furthest
recess of the garden, whilst many a planting travesty is given pride of
place elsewhere.

Creative plant choices

Look at why plants are being used in specific locations. Avenues and borders
are generally clear and distinct entities but individual plant specimens and
island beds can be much more ambiguous, often plonked in spare spaces
without much thought.

The new ornamental meadow plantings favoured by contemporary designers such as
Tom Stuart Smith or Piet Oudolf bring a different character again. These
wide expanses of low perennials and grasses can be walked through rather
than simply looked at, as we do with the traditional border.

Within any planting scheme look for the relationships that have brought
different species together. They may be led by colour, texture or foliage
shape. Certain forms or specific plants may be repeated many times in order
to create rhythm and coherence.

Consider the scale of a planting scheme and ask questions about the depth of
the planting area, the density of planting or the number of plants grouped
together to achieve impact. I ask my students to make notes on selected
plant groupings and to photograph them from many angles to enable them to
understand the composition three-dimensionally.

A notebook, camera and a retractable tape measure are the tools of good garden
analysis.


It’s all about space

Finally, there is a much more abstract way of analysing and reviewing gardens,
which is to consider the relationship of what is known as mass and void.
Mass is anything solid or that has volume. This includes planting, hedges,
trees and buildings. The void is the empty space: lawns, paving and water. A
quick assessment of the ratio of one to the other can produce an effective
analysis of whether garden spaces work. A mass rating of 20-40 per cent
generally creates a comfortable and interesting space. Gardens with less
than 20 per cent mass, where the void is more dominant, may feel
uncomfortable and somewhat sterile.

These are the key elements on my marking sheets when I’m teaching, or in
conversation with other judges about a show garden.

While the system helps us to achieve as objective a response as possible, it
isn’t the whole story. To any garden that we visit, we bring our preferences
and our foibles. Some gardens will proclaim their character, intoxicating us
with their charm. Others will leave us cold and uninspired. Sometimes it may
be nothing more than the weather, or the time of year, that affects the
impression a garden leaves.

Our reactions to a garden ultimately say more about us than about the gardens.
Recognising this is the basis of all debate, and where the fun really starts.

Andrew Wilson is a garden designer and co-director of the Wilson McWilliam
Studio, wmstudio.co.uk, a director of the London College of Garden Design, lcgd.org.uk,
an author and a judge for show gardens for the Royal Horticultural Society.

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Maine Gardener: The art of bringing the indoors out, and vice versa

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April 22

Maine Gardener: The art of bringing the indoors out, and vice versa

By TOM ATWELL

Gardens shouldn’t be something you just look at — they should be something you live in. They should be part of your lifestyle, fit with your house and property, and be an extension of your daily life.

Creating outdoor rooms is a major part of the design theory promoted by Brook Klausing, who runs Brook Landscape Inc. in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Rebecca McMackin, garden designer and horticulturist at Brooklyn Bridge Park, during their talk at New England Grows earlier this year.

“The more enclosed a garden is, the more it is an extension of your home,” Klausing said.

Working in an urban environment, the enclosure of the garden might be the building that butts up to your property line. But if you live in a more open environment, it could be created by walls, fences or plants at the edge of the property.

“The purpose of these outdoor rooms,” McMackin said, “is to ease the transition from the indoors to the outdoors.”

In an urban area, where the lines around your property are likely to be straight and hard, you want your landscaping to soften those lines, McMackin said. But in a rural or suburban environment, where the landscape is softer, you want to create some harder definitions — perhaps fences or walls.

Klausing said that while part of the purpose of these rooms is to bring people outside, another part is to bring the outside indoors, and that it helps to have elements inside the house that mirror items outside. It can be paintings inside that include the plants outside, similar materials or similar style furnishings.

In creating these garden rooms, you have to know what you want to do. Sometimes they can be a traditional room — a place to cook, eat, talk or even sleep. But other times, it is just a smaller part of the yard with a different look.

McMackin said that in a suburban environment, the goal usually is to create privacy. You don’t want the neighbors or people driving by to see you out in your yard — even if you are just reading or resting.

You can create this privacy with fences or hedges, whether the hedges are geometrically trimmed or more natural. Even though you probably are not going to have helicopters over your house every day, a canopy of some sort — created with big trees or climbing vines — can create a sense of protection.

If a home is in a wooded area, the goal is to create some open space so the homeowners don’t feel so closed in. But the landscape should blend into its natural surroundings, not be starkly different.

“You want to create a sense of ease in which you have some control,” McMackin said. “But you want to be part of something rather than master of it.”

If your property is large enough, pathways help to create rooms. It helps if the pathways can meander a little and be fairly narrow, Klausing said.

“You don’t want to see that far ahead,” he said. “There is mystery around the next bend. And it is OK if the plant touches you as you pass.”

Sometimes, however, you don’t want the rooms to be completely closed off. If you leave holes in the separation, you can enjoy dappled sunlight in the area where you are sitting. One of the best ways to create that dappled sunlight is to grow plants on trellises.

And one of the most enjoyable parts of any garden could be a hidden-away corner of the garden.

“You want it to be protected, but with a view,” McMackin said. It can be a place where you have the effect of an old-fashioned front porch, perhaps with some vines or shrubbery shielding you from view but not so much that you can’t see the world passing by.

Another thing a garden can do, Klausing said, is make the view even better. Figure out where people will be when they take in the surroundings, then figure out the best vista.

“You can put in plants to frame your view, to highlight what you want people to see,” he said.

A few weeks after I heard Klausing and McMackin speak, I heard a lot of the same ideas mentioned by Kathleen Carr Bailey of Finishing Touches Garden Design in Portland. Her Portland Flower Show talk emphasized the spirituality of gardening, but the places she said she usually likes best are in a corner of the property, as far away from the house as possible.

“Curb appeal may be nice,” she said, “but it is even nicer to have a wonderful space that no one else is going to see.”

Sometimes the space will include just a chair, a table and a few plants. Sometimes it will include a small water feature or an attractive rock or stone feature. And it is a place that you can see — maybe not distinctly — from the house.

“It is nice to have a destination when you go out into the garden,” she said.

Tom Atwell has been writing the Maine Gardener column since 2004. He is a freelance writer gardening in Cape Elizabeth, and can be contacted at 767-2297 or at:

tomatwell@me.com

 

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Creating a Garden for your Older Home for Year-Round Pleasure and Beauty

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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS, NJ – On Wednesday, April 18, at 7:30 pm the Atlantic Highlands Historical Society will sponsor at talk by award-winning garden designer Diane Guidone.   Ms. Guidone will share insights and advice on how to create a garden that enhances and complements your older home. 

Garden designer Diane Guidone

  • Discover what your home’s garden might have looked like originally
  • Re-design that look in a way that works for today, given current garden pests, urban pollution, soil compaction and more.
  • Plan practical changes over time to achieve the look you want

Diane Guidone has been designing garden spaces for more than ten years, in Europe and the US.  Her philosophy is that garden designs should unite the architectural features of a home and the surrounding landscape, and create outdoor living spaces that complement the owner’s lifestyle, needs, and uses for the garden.  

Her design process begins with an assessment of the home’s architecture and style and an evaluation of the existing landscape.  Her gardens are developed with plant specimens whose shape, color, structure, and growth provide continual pleasure and visual interest throughout the year. 

She studied horticulture and garden design at The English Gardening School at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, has been designing gardens for more than ten years.  Her designs include the beautiful gardens at Middletown Township Main LIbrary. 

Ms. Guidone has received several awards for her designs, and in 2011 was the recipient of the Hamilton Award for Dedication and Outstanding Commitment to the Rutgers Gardens. 

Sponsored by the Atlantic Highlands Historical Society at 7:30 pm Wednesday, April 18 in the Senior Center in the Atlantic Highlands Municipal Harbor.  Free and open to the public, light refreshments will be served. 

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Garden clubs join forces to host landscape designer

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Friday, March 30, 2012

Courtesy photo
Garden club committee member, from left, Susan Tucker, Goffstown; Pat Caisse, Milford; Bernita Desmond, Merrimack; Marti Warren, Amherst; Gail York, Manchester; and Sandy MacKey, Bedford, meet to plan the upcoming Gordon Hayward program, “The Intimate Garden.”


Enlarge


BEDFORD – One of the missions of local garden clubs is to educate the public and promote gardening skills and knowledge.

To that end, garden clubs from Amherst, Bedford, Goffstown, Hollis, Hooksett, Manchester, Merrimack and Milford have combined their resources to bring nationally renowned landscape designer and author Gordon Hayward to Bedford.

Hayward will share his expertise with the community when he presents “The Intimate Garden at Bedford High School Theatre,” at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 19.

Hayward and his wife have spent 28 years transforming their own 1½ acre Vermont garden from a ramshackle piece of property into the intimate haven.

With the use of more than 200 color slides, he will reveal their gardening trials and errors and the garden design expertise they honed in the process.

Hayward has a reputation for being an engaging speaker who gives practical landscape design advice that can be easily adopted in your own garden.

Hayward is the author of 10 books on garden design, two of which won national awards. Hayward designed the Frye Gardens in Peterborough, which were featured in Traditional Home Magazine and on the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program. He wrote for Horticulture Magazine for 25 years and has given many lectures across America.

Hayward’s mantra is “You can do this!” Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to put Hayward’s design principles to work in your own outdoor spaces.

The public is invited to attend. Tickets may be purchased for $5 at Bedford Fields, 331 Route 101 in Bedford. On April 19, tickets will be sold for $8 and will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

For more information or to purchase tickets through the eight hosting garden clubs, call 488-5001 or visit bedfordnhgardenclub.org.

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Free garden tour puts the spotlight on native plant gardens

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When clocks are switched to Daylight Saving Time and days lengthen, warm temperatures and new green growth lure us back outside. Walks in East Bay Regional Parks adorned with spring wildflowers and budding shrubs turn our attention to creating something similar in our own outdoor spaces.

Kathy Kramer, organizer of the Eighth annual Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, would love to help homeowners toward a new type of garden, one that is pesticide-free, conserves water, provides habitat for wildlife and contains 60 percent or more native plants.

On Sunday, May 6, Kramer’s free, self-guided driving tour will feature 43 Alameda and Contra Costa County gardens, including ones in Antioch, Concord, Walnut Creek,

Pleasanton, Livermore, Orinda and San Ramon. Between garden visits, questions to homeowners and more than 50 formal talks offered throughout the day, participants will learn to select and care for native plants, lower water bills and design low-maintenance gardens that attract butterflies, birds and bees.

“The tour is inspiring and educational. People are exposed to different garden designs and uses of native plants,” Kramer said. “It’s a really fun day.”

The tour website is an ideal starting point. Here one can view the tour gardens and look over lists of native plant nurseries and designers. Those who complete the online registration receive the 80-page garden guide necessary for tour participation.

East County residents

looking to lower water bills may be interested that several garden hosts will have their water bills on display. Along the same water conservation lines, the Concord garden of Laura Spain is a result of the Contra Costa Water District’s “Lose the lawn and grow a garden” program. Spain received a $500 rebate to remove her lawn and plant natives.

Several native plant nurseries will have plant sales on May 5 and May 6, including Middlebrook Gardens Nursery in Pleasanton.

“When asked

what they want from the tour, 75 percent say they want to learn how to select native plants,” Kramer said. “Secondly, 55 percent want to learn how to conserve water.”

The 15 Contra Costa County gardens range from large hill lots to small front gardens and include those designed and installed by professionals and homeowners. In Antioch, Valerie and Harry Thurston’s concern about the environment led them to have Michael Thilgen transform their 1,200-square-foot front yard into a wildlife haven composed of purple sages, sea lavenders, penstemon and red-flowered native fuchsia. A burbling fountain is a focal point as are manzanita and coffeeberry that flow down a gentle slope.

Judith Sherwood chose a natural design for her large

Concord garden, one that includes several attractive water features and a dry streambed. She selected plants as potential bee, bird and butterfly habitats and food sources. Laura Spain’s Concord garden also was designed to attract wildlife and her milkweed plants draw hummingbirds, bees and Monarch butterflies. Wide garden beds are bordered by rocks and flower colors flow from pink manzanita, creamy yarrow and red fuchsia to bright orange monkeyflowers.

Erik and Shellie Jacobson wanted to replicate their favorite hiking landscapes in their Walnut Creek garden in a less-is-more design. They choose grasses, rushes and rosy buckwheats for their sunny front yard. With additional manzanita, redbud, madrone, coffeeberry and sages, the Bay

Area natural landscape was complete.

Two Pleasanton gardens are neighbors and one, that of Ward and Pat Belding, provided inspiration for Colleen Clark’s garden. The Beldings replaced their 1700-square-foot front lawn with hot-climate manzanita, coffeeberry, fuchsia, buckwheat, California lilac and three fountains that are bird-favorites. Next door, visitors to Clark’s garden will feast their eyes on spring annuals that include buttercups, cream cups and clarkia, and perhaps spot a hummingbird visiting monkeyflowers or cooling off in the fountain’s tumbling water.

In Lafayette, the .3-acre back yard of Claire and Bill Gilbert has progressed in stages since 2000. Its parklike setting contains an oak-bay garden on a slope and natives

arranged into chaparral, oak woodland and riparian areas. A three-tiered waterfall, pond and nearby bog attract a wide variety of birds and other wildlife.

The Lafayette garden of Mary and Michael Jennings was designed by son Michael into a peaceful oak-bay woodland where mulched paths end at Old Jonas Creek. Honeysuckle, mugwort and ferns share the garden with a variety of berry plants that attract birds, while toads, frogs and salamanders enjoy secluded niches.

Kramer notes that every year 50 percent of her 7,000 registrants are new to the tour. “So that’s 3,500 people who are just getting exposed to native plants,” she said. “I hope to continue educating people about the many values that native plants provide.”

IF YOU GO

What: Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 6
Where: Throughout the East Bay
Cost: Free, but registration is required.
Info: www.bringingbackthenatives.net

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House, gardens provide view into past

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Longue Vue House and Gardens in New Orleans (www.longuevue.com), now a museum and public garden, was designed in 1935-42 as the home for Edgar Bloom Stern and Edith Rosenwald Sulzberger Stern. Both were important philanthropists: Edgar was a cotton broker and banker, and Edith was heiress to the Sears-Roebuck fortune.

The gardens at Longue Vue, 10 minutes from Bourbon Street and downtown New Orleans, provide visitors with an opportunity to tour 14 separate garden rooms including an Azalea Walk, Yellow Garden, Canal Garden, Walled Garden, Spanish Court, Wild Garden and Discovery Garden.

Two women were integral to the beauty of the estate you can see at Longue Vue: The 8-acre landscape and the 22,000 square-foot residential interior were designed by Ellen Biddle Shipman and the landscape plan was implemented with the help of Caroline Dormon.

Shipman (1869-1950), who designed 600 gardens, was known for creating pictures as an artist would, but using plants instead of paint. Unlike most garden designers, Shipman was an experienced gardener who knew plants.

Called “The Dean of Women Landscape Architects,” Shipman felt that the garden was the most essential part of a house. After her garden was installed, the Sterns decided to remove the original house and replace it with a house that provided better views of the landscape. (More details at http://tinyurl.com/d78al4)

Dormon (1888-1971) specialized in, and wrote books about, native plants which she grew at her family home, now the Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve. As the first female employee of the U.S. Forestry Service, she is credited with single-handedly establishing the 600,000 acre Kisatchie National Forest, the only National Forest in Louisiana.

Longue Vue’s Head Gardener, Amy Graham said, “Mrs. Stern opened the gardens to the public in 1968, then in 1980 the house was open to the public. Over the years, various gardeners deviated from Shipman’s original designs. After Hurricane Katrina, Garden Conservancy and Heritage Landscapes (www.gardenconservancy.org) funded and produced a ten-year Landscape Renewal Plan to restore the landscape while honoring the original Shipman plans.”

In 2006, hundreds of volunteers including staff from The Garden Conservancy volunteered at Longue Vue, assisting in clearing debris, which took 6 months. . (Before and after pictures and more information at http://tinyurl.com/87x6hnd)

Today, Graham has two full-time and three part-time gardeners. The day we visited, dozens of volunteers from the Hillel Community were raking paths to prepare the grounds for events.

Graham said that in the Iris Walk, 60 percent of the plants were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. The New Orleans Iris Society donated the labor and more than 800 iris plants. The collection now stands at more than 2,600, which provides a breathtaking display each spring.

The Wild Garden is filled with native plants from Dormon’s extensive collection and were taken from her own garden. Plants include dogwood, viburnum, witch hazel, wild azalea and assorted perennial shrubs and flowers. Three paths lead into the food-filled Walled Garden.

The Discovery Garden is a one-half acre addition to the original design. Inspired by the Sterns’ commitment to education, it has butterfly, herb and vegetable gardens where many hands-on children’s programs are held.

The Canal Garden, lined with potted plants, was inspired by the Quinto do Cabo near Lisbon, Portugal.

The Spanish Court has been re-designed a few times, changing from a lawn in the 1920s to a Camellia allee designed by Shipman in the 1930s, remade into a Loggia in the 1950s, then remade into the Spanish Court by William Platt in the1960s. It has a reflecting pool with arching fountains.

A tour of the house and gardens should be on your to do list if you are in the New Orleans area. They are both well worth your time.

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Double Winning Designer Returns to Cardiff RHS Show

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Cardiff garden designer Gaynor Witchard gave up her full time job with the BBC to embark on a garden design career after tasting success at the RHS Show Cardiff (www.rhs.org.uk/cardiff), and after two successive Best Show Garden awards, Gaynor returns to the parklands of Cardiff Castle on the weekend of April 20 with a design that she hopes will net her a hat trick.

Cardiff provides the beautiful setting for the first RHS outdoor show of the season, with blooms from nurseries across the country, show gardens from Welsh designers like Gaynor, an abundance of guidance and inspiration from the experts during three days of colour and entertainment aimed at the serious horticulturalist and the day tripper alike. This year the event features in National Gardening Week, the RHS’s bid to get the nation gardening.

Gaynor’s design for 2012 is called Off The Shelf, a contemporary, low-maintenance garden created for a small space on a modest budget, with pale sandstone paving to increase and reflect the light levels and mainly hardy, evergreen planting to maintain some colour throughout the year. Gaynor said: “The RHS Show in Cardiff really launched my career, and I’m so excited to be back to hopefully inspire people to take another look at the space they have at home. Many of my clients ask for a low maintenance garden – but that doesn’t mean all gravel and no plants. Once established, the plants in my garden require little attention. I’d also like to take the opportunity to thanks my three generous sponsors – Brett Landscaping, SELCO SWLC plants.”

This is the eighth RHS Show Cardiff, delivered through a partnership between Cardiff Council and the Royal Horticultural Society. It highlights the best of the spring blooms and provides inspiration for the gardening season ahead. Features include:

o    Show gardens from Wales’ leading designers
o    Talks, demonstrations and expert advice  from the RHS
o    Floral marquees with over 50 floral exhibitors Plant Plaza
o    Schools Wheelbarrow competition with over 60 colourful, creative youngsters’ designs
o    Launch of Campaign for School Gardening initiative by Chris Collins
o    Garden furniture and equipment

o    Craft Village
o    Cafe Quarter and Food Hall
o    Nature trails
o    Street entertainers and live music on the bandstand

RHS Shows Director Stephen Bennett said: “Gaynor has a proven track record in Cardiff and a great story to tell on how the show has changed her life. I’m sure she will once again do very well, as she puts so much into her garden designs.”

Filed Under: garden design

Garden party ideas

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Posted Mar 29, 2012
By Pam Pratt

EMC News – You have designed your own garden but realize it doesn’t match the glorious display you envisioned. So, you need some ideas to get you started. When you look into garden design you discover it is a complicated area covering diverse topics like plant selection and pattern styles which start your stomach sinking and causes your resolve to melt away. You know what you like when you see it in someone else’s garden but you aren’t experienced enough in the art of garden design to translate it into your own plan.

David Priest, master gardener, will be at the Perth and District Horticultural Society (PDHS) on Tuesday, April 10, to introduce Garden Design Patterns, a presentation on the language of garden design. The presentation will focus on the garden elements of form, foliage, and flowers to illustrate how these components can be combined to develop and discuss garden designs. Priest is the owner/developer of www.gardenaway.com, a website that helps gardeners find plants for their gardens. While working with White House Perenials in Almonte on a display garden renovation, Priest realized that several designs stood out in the garden work and developed a descriptive language for those designs so that others could learn and be inspired. The result, Garden Design Patterns, will be available on his website in the early spring.

The meeting is at 7:30 p.m. in the Library of PDCI on Tuesday, April 10, to hear this fascinating presentation and maybe be inspired. Non-members are always welcome and are asked to pay $3 at the door.

Speaking of spring, it is that time again – time for our Junior Gardeners Program. It is a six-week program given once a week by PDHS volunteers in local elementary schools. Its purpose is to introduce school children to the joys of gardening and perhaps inspire in them a lifetime passion. This program is so successful that we have over 250 children from area schools participating this year. It is almost bigger than we can manage but we are thrilled with the reaction of students and the enthusiasm of teachers. Each child gets a journal, a workbook, plants, cactus garden, Mother’s Day arrangement and seeds to take home. As you can imagine our costs are beginning to add up considerably and we ask for your support for our annual Great Perennial Plant Sale at the end of May which provides much of the funding required for this program.

Perth and area has always been most supportive of our initiatives and we thank all sponsors and volunteers for their continued efforts and support.

Why not join the PDHS? For only $10 per year, you get a beautiful Yearbook, monthly meetings with interesting speakers and a social time, winter and summer social events, trip opportunities, a discount at local garden centres and a host of new friends.

Submitted by Pam Pratt, Perth District Horticultural Society

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