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STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS TO ELEVATE YOUR LANDSCAPE

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Winter is the perfect time to critically evaluate our gardens. With many of the plants in dormancy, the strength of our gardens’ bones is revealed. Take a winter walk through your property to determine whether it might benefit from the incorporation of the following structural elements:

 

EDGING

 

Whether lining a driveway with cobbles or defining the separation of the lawn and planting beds with brick, an edge makes a garden’s design stand out.

Brick defines this garden in Charleston.
At Mount Sharon (a Charles Stick garden), bluestone frames the lawn and draws the eye to the gazebo in the distance.

Cobbles separate the brick drive and lawn. A brick mowing edge (a rowlock flush with the lawn and perpendicular to a standing sailor) separates the lawn from the planting bed.

Groundcover is an excellent edger, if maintained properly. In this New Orleans garden, groundcover is planted in a robust swath, and provides a lovely natural frame to the (out of bloom) Agapanthus.


Cobblestone is an excellent edge for lawns. It holds up well to lawn mowers and string trimmers. Just be sure to take drainage into consideration when installing the cobbles.


WATER

A water feature can be a subtle addition to the garden, tucked into a corner, or a central feature. Be sure to add a spout or other means of water flow to prevent mosquitos and to add the alluring sound of moving water. When designing a water feature, I always make sure to soften and frame it with plants, to avoid a harsh assault of pavement.

This charming stone pool at The Priory in Wareham, England is tucked into a small garden, and contains plenty of pockets for perennials.

I separated this small pool from the stone walkway with a one foot wide bed of small periwinkle (Vinca minor).

This bog garden is also part of the Priory’s property.

An old brick wall is put to good use at Zero George in Charleston, where water spills into an Aubergine oil jar next to the hotel’s terrace.

At Pippin Hill Farm and Vineyards, outside Charlottesville, the capture of rainwater is transformed into a lovely water feature. The water is directed from the roof into this cistern, then channeled through a rill.


A stepping stone “bridge” is built over a small stream at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, bringing the visitor closer to the wetland plants.


FRAMING AN ENTRANCE OR VIEW

Transitions are critical in a garden. Incorporate a gate, arbor or other feature that beckons to highlight the movement from one garden space to another.

This lattice fence separates two gardens in Princeton, New Jersey.

This wide lattice at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown (designed by Beatrix Farrand) separates two garden rooms, but also frames the view into that room.

Neighbors share this side entry from front to back gardens, with a tall picket fence and a rose covered arbor.

Charleston utilizes their minimal space between houses better than any city I’ve seen. Here, brick columns and a wrought iron gate provide the transition.

Climbing hydrangea clings to and spills over a lattice fence in Maine.

The opening in the old stone walls elevates what would otherwise be an insignificant path.


WALLS

Even the slightest change in grade in a garden is an opportunity to introduce a beautiful wall. Plants are always enhanced when enveloped by a wall made of natural materials.

This stone wall in Atlanta is softened by evergreens, including espaliered ligustrum.

This stone retaining wall in Kansas City levels a lawn that sloped to the curb.

We killed two birds with one stone (OK, many stones) in this garden when we built this seat wall opposite the entrance to a charming stone cottage.

A slight rise in the grade of this yard allowed us to introduce a drylaid stone wall to add interest to this Richmond garden. A Princeton garden took advantage of the same opportunity, below.


WALKWAYS

Circulation is the thread that holds a garden together. A garden should lead us from one space to another, sometimes subtly, other times audaciously. There is a hierarchy in landscape walkways. Broad paths, usually mortared, signal direction to a main entrance. Stepping stones set in the turf or garden bed lure the garden lover or the curious to, quite literally, get off the beaten path and explore.

This bold brick walkway plays off the curved bedlines, and takes a languorous route to the house.

Rectilinear stepping stones set firmly in the turf with a good stonedust base provide an excellent secondary garden path.

This secondary garden path, leading from the main terrace to a side terrace, is also effective. It is tumbled bluestone with sand joints.

Fieldstone bisects this perennial border.

Bluestone winds its way through a woodland garden. Anytime you have a bed deeper than 6 to 8 feet, you have the opportunity to run a stepping stone path through it. This helps with maintenance and allows the gardener to create a secret garden within the garden.

Grass is a fabulous path, and works well in country gardens.


FOCAL POINT

A well-designed landscape uses focal points to enhance the garden’s structure. A focal point can be a seat, an urn or some other garden ornament. It can be on an obvious axial point, or more subtly tucked into a corner of the garden.

This stone seat is along a woodland garden path at the Maine Botanical Garden.

This staddle stone, set in a lawn path at the Priory in Wareham, England, is beautifully framed by the Ware River and the natural stream-edge plantings.

These urns and pedestals in New Orleans echo the rectilinear garden design and flank the primary walkway.

This tuteur sits at the center of two intersecting paths, and so is seen from four viewpoints in the garden. A matching tuteur sits on axis from this one across the garden by the pool.

This iron bench and table sit on axis with the garden entrance.

A defunct tiered iron fountain was transformed into a lovely planter in this Richmond garden.

On a recent visit to London, I was captivated by the container plantings. This planting — espaliered magnolia underplanted with cyclamen in a converted galvanized tub — is repeated along this series of town houses.

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GO VERTICAL! (IN THE GARDEN)

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It’s often said that winter is the perfect time to study your garden’s bones.  As you do so, look up!  Pay special attention to your garden’s vertical elements.  Incorporating walls, fences, arbors, trellises, trees and shrubs  can solve many problems and will add interest and beauty to your landscape.

SEPARATION

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Whether you want to screen a driveway, gain a bit of privacy, or just provide transition from one garden space to another, vertical elements will do the job. A trellised fence takes up little space (depth) and provides a support for plants. In the picture above, Climbing Hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris)  covers a fence.

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The tall picket fence and arched gate above tackle three issues:  they create separation  between front and back yards with a light touch, connect the buildings and provide support for roses.

 

At Dumbarton Oaks, below, a chain connected to stone pillars supports a Wisteria vine and creates a sense of enclosure.

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In another area of the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown, Wisteria is pruned to frame the beautiful latticework that physically separates the amphitheatre, without visually screening it. Beatrix Farrand, who designed the  gardens, was masterful in using vertical elements to shape the sloping land into separate terraced gardens with brilliant circulation from one garden to the next.

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The latticed fence below, anchored by variegated Hosta, defines property lines and provides a connection between the neighbors’ gardens.

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The front entrance, below, in this Kansas City neighborhood is beautifully defined by the stone and wrought iron fence and gate.

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SEPARATION WITH PLANTS:  This fruit tree in Lasham, England (I think it was a Pear), one of several along an axis,  has been trained to bear fruit and separates the garden into two distinct spaces.

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Charleston gardeners are some of the most talented vertical gardeners.  In the picture below, the hedge, punctuated by a line of Palmettos, is an effective screen of the parking area. While the English gardener uses the fruit trees, above,  only for definition, the Charleston hedge below is tasked with being a visually impenetrable screen.

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I love the contrast in the English hedge below — tightly clipped (with flanking clipped sentries), yet with a fuzzy unkempt crown and surrounded by unmowed fields.

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AN EXCUSE TO GROW PLANTS

Give a gardener a structure, and he or she will find a creative way to adorn it with plants. In the pictures below, a talented Princeton gardener espaliers Japanese Maples (Acer palmatum) and Japanese Hollies (Ilex crenata) on a humble cinderblock wall.

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In the same Princeton garden, Climbing Hydrangea  frames a window.

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Below, trellises supporting roses complement the architecture and strengthen the symmetry of a  formal garden.

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No room to grow Figs or other fruit trees?  Espalier them along a wall or strong fence, as is done below.

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Below:  Wall?  What wall?

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The pale pink and white Camellias (Camellia japonica) growing on the simple gothic trellises transform an otherwise empty weathered concrete wall along a Charleston driveway.

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Below, roses smother a thatch-roofed cottage in Lasham, England.

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Vertical features don’t just create enclosure and define boundaries.  A tuteur or other plant support, like the one below sporting the native Passionflower Vine (Passiflora incarnata), acts as a focal point at Whilton, an exquisite garden near Charlottesville.

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CANOPY

A mature tree canopy is an almost indispensable vertical element in the garden. Not only does it provide vertical interest, it offers shade and dappled light in the garden.   In the pictures below, allees are used to define space, act as a guide to a destination and reinforce a strong axial line.

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Dumbarton Oaks, above.  Whilton, below.

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Below, Plane Trees (Platanus x acerifolia) somewhere in Europe (9 years ago — can’t remember!).  The width of the path is inexplicably out of scale with the allee.

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What a beautiful “ceiling” the mature canopy makes  at Dumbarton Oaks below.

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The native Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis), below, is host to a Climbing Hydrangea.  Never allow English Ivy (Hedera helix)  to climb a tree.  When growing any other vine, be sure to keep it under control, so that the vine does not inhibit the tree from producing the leaves necessary to thrive.

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The streetscape in Savannah, below, gives me hope for urban planting.  This strip bordering a commercial property was used to maximum effect.  The evergreens  were planted effectively between windows, then expertly pruned to frame the windows,  show off the multi-trunk effect artfully against the pale wall, and allow pedestrians to pass below the canopies.  They are underplanted with a simple ground cover.

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And finally, have some fun with your vertical elements, as they did in the gardens at Whilton, below!

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THE GARDENS OF DUMBARTON OAKS

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Tucked away in a quiet part of Georgetown is Dumbarton Oaks, one of the finest American gardens still in existence.  Inspired by her travels in Italy with her aunt Edith Wharton (author of Italian Villas and their Gardens), landscape gardener Beatrix Farrand created an American interpretation of the classical Mediterranean gardens she had studied, by carving out a series of garden rooms from the hilly terrain near Rock Creek for Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss, beginning in 1921.

 

Farrand designed a series of stone and brick walls, paths and steps, as well as  arbors, trellises, pools and fountains.  Although the layout was guided by Italian principles, she was influenced in her planting design by the English garden style, and Gertrude Jekyll, specifically.

Eleanor McPeck wrote in Beatrix Farrand’s American Landscapes,  that Farrand’s trademarks were “clarity of outline, a strong sense of enclosure, the simple plan enriched by architectural detail and softened by perennial beds and trees.”  The gardens of Dumbarton Oaks illustrate these principles beautifully.

My friend, Carolyn, standing in front of the north facade, below the French steps, on a cold day in February.

In 1941, after the estate was given to Harvard University, director John Thacher asked  Farrand to write a guide for the garden’s care.  Diane Kostial McGuire, in a foreward to  Farrand’s  Plant Book for Dumbarton Oaks, wrote that the book “resulted in this unique document that describes measures to be taken when plants need replacement, the various levels of maintenance required, the design concept of each part of the gardens, why particular choices were made, and why certain ideas were rejected.”

Below, a look at the gardens, as described by Beatrix Farrand in her Plant Book:

The Box Terrace (a revision by Ruth Havey eliminated the beautiful simplicity of the garden as envisioned by Farrand).

 

“The Box Terrace is intended to be an introductino to the Rose Garden, rather than a garden of importance on its own account. . .  If the Box is allowed to grow too large it engulfs the scale of the terrace, which then tends to look more like a shelf than an overture to the Rose Garden.”

Lovers’ Lane pool and amphitheater.  The seats were adapted from the “open-air theatre on the slopes of the Janiculum Hill at the Accademia degli Arcadi Bosco Parrasio.  The shape of the theatre was copied from the one in Rome, but the slopes surrounding the Dumbarton theatre are far steeper than those on the Italian hillsides.”

 

“The whole arrangement surrounding the Lovers’ Lane pool is entirely controlled by the natural slopes of the ground and the deire to keep as many of the native trees as possible unhurt and undisturbed.”

 

“In order to give seclusion to this little theatre, it has been surrounded by cast-stone columns, baroque in design. . . The columns are connected with a split natural-wood lattice in long horizontal rectangles.”

 

The Herbaceous Borders, with the toolshed in the background

 

“The composition of the planting of the Herbaceous Border should be rather carefully chosen from material which is somewhat unusual in its character and harmonious in its color tones.”

 

The Rose Garden 

 

“The high wall, on the west side with its latticed-brick balustrade, shows the difference in the material thought appropriate to use on account of the added distance from the house and its more formal lines  . . .  This high wall is an admirable place on which to grow certain climbing Roses, perhaps a Magnolia grandiflora, Clematis paniculata, and a wispy veil of Forsythia suspensa narrowing the steps leading from the Box to the Rose Garden Terrace.”

 

The Fountain Terrace contains two identical pools set in the lawn and enclosed by stone walls.

 

Beatrix would not be happy to find her fountains so spotless and pristine. She wrote, “two fountains are kept filled and playing during the summer season, and it is important that their curbs be allowed to become as mossy as possible, as, scrubbed and cleaned well, the curbs would look new and fresh and garish, whereas the fountains should appear to have been ‘found’ there and to be a part of the old plan.”

 

The Pebble Garden

 

The Beech Terrace. 

 

“. . . the structure of the tree (Fagus grandifolia) in winter is almost as beautiful as its summer color.  It was clear that in any poistion so dominated by one magnificent tree, all the other planting must be secondary and as inconspicuous as possible.”

 

Wisteria (if only I’d visited a couple of weeks before!) grows up a low wall and along a chain.

 

 

 

 

 

Steps from the Fountain Garden to the Rose Garden

 “The steps have been broken into three different flights in order to make the climbing not too laborious a process.  Two-thirds of the way down the steps, a seat, under a lead canopy, is placed on the landing, and, when possible, is surrounded by pot [no, I don’t think she means THAT pot] plants which harmonize in color with those used in the garden.”

 

The irregular stones used in these beautiful steps signal that you are descending toward the “naturalistic” woodland and dell.

 

 

The sun shines through the Wisteria vines.

 

The Wisteria Arbor “was modified from a design of Du Cerceau (from his drawing of the garden of the Chateau Montargis).  It is planted almost entirely with Wistaria, mainly of the lavender variety but with some few plants of white.  The Wistaria Arbor is designed so as to be seen from below, so that the hanging clutches of the flowers will make a fragrant and lovely roof to the arbor.”

A closer look at the stunning woodwork of the Wisteria Arbor.

 

The orangery was built around 1810.  Creeping Fig (Ficus pumila) climbs the walls and ceilings, and is pruned to form a pendant in front of each window.

Owner Mildred Bliss wrote, upon Beatrix Farrand’s death, “never did Beatrix Farrand impose on the land an arbitrary concept.  She ‘listened’ to the light and wind and grade of each area under study.  The gardens grew naturally from one another until now, in their luxuriant spring growth, as in the winter when leafless branches show each degree of distance and the naked masonry, there is a special quality of charming restfulness.”