Garden Diary: The Front Garden

The "front" of our house on Federal Twist - the facade facing the road - is actually the back. It presents a simple wall to visitors. The real front of the house is at the back, where an unbroken wall of floor to ceiling windows gives onto the main garden, and surrounding it, the woods.


The choice of where the front garden would be was predetermined by a barren gravel circle at the front entrance. The house is about 165 feet from the road, with open woods in between, so screening wasn't absolutely necessary, but added privacy was desirable since none of the windows are covered. Even more important, I wanted to create a focal point and add visual interest. The photo above is the front garden, still in progress, this past summer. The second photo shows the original front "garden" when we purchased the house in fall of 2004.

The house is a simple, shed-like structure, at least viewed from the side facing the road. The only notable front views out are from the kitchen window and sliding doors in the dining room. The original view out was onto a circular graveled area about 28 feet in diameter, with a mostly dead crab apple, a couple of scraggly burning bushes (Euonymous alatus), a line of arborvitae, and two Sedum spectabile 'Autumn Joy' eaten to the ground by deer. To the side were two rotting, frequently amputated Japanese cherries.

Looking out toward the road, the view of the woods was not without interest but also not particularly notable. We needed something to look at from inside the house, to provide additional screening in place of window and door coverings, and to make the facade facing the road more welcoming - something that would screen our uncovered expanses of glass, providing privacy, while signaling a greeting to visitors and giving clear direction to the house entry, which was hidden at the far end of a dark porch.

After we cleared most of the area, the first plant to go in was a large Ravenna grass (Saccharum ravennae), which I split in two - a discard of our friend Roberta, who found it overwhelming in her small Lambertville garden (I had put it there). This was in May of 2005. You'll have to click on the photo to see the two grasses in the wide expanse of gravel.
In the top photo you can see how, once the grass matured, its fountain-like shape and large size made it a welcoming gesture to anyone turning into the drive.

Planting continued through that summer of 2005, and by August was essentially finished. I used several Miscanthus (Gracillimus, Yaku Jima, Adagio), Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium maculatum 'Gateway'), Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Firetail', catmint (Nepeta m. 'Walkers Low'), Sedum 'Matrona', Bluestocking monarda (Monarda d. 'Blaustrumpf'), a small lilac (personal request from Phil), Pennisetum a. 'Moudry', a few Japanese Blood Grasses (Imperator cylindrica rubrum), Aster laterifolius 'Lady in Black', Lychnis coronaria, purple smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple'), and an inkberry holly (Ilex glabra) to anchor one corner. I scattered seed of Verbena bonariensis and bronze fennel, and I kept two of the arborvitae, the legacy Sedum 'Autumn Joy', and self-seeded Eupatorium rugosum (a really invasive thug I'm now trying to eliminate). The first year planting looks scraggly but by the next spring it had filled out well, as you can see in the next three photos taken in late June 2006.


In 11 months, the Miscanthus, Joe Pye Weed, and Saccarum had grown into substantial islands of graceful foliage and the Nepeta 'Walkers Low', just passing its early prolific bloom, had relaxed into the contours of its surroundings like an old hand.

All of this was working on the large scale, creating a new space and transforming the house on Federal Twist into a place with a little more mystery than before.


On the smaller scale, details of flower and foliage shape and texture began to add interest - monarda busy with bees and butterflies ...


Purple smoke bush graced by the magenta of Lychnis coronaria ...


and the smoke bush again, with cat mint and Sedum 'Matrona' against a hedge of burning bush.

Under the gravel is clay, same as everywhere else at Federal Twist. Unlike the main garden at the back, this one is raised above the surrounding grade, so drainage is much better. Though it makes a very heavy planting medium, the clay is rich and, after only two years, it looks like some of the grasses will need to be divided next year.

To finish, a couple of views from this past summer ...

Time, mystery and the gardener

The passage of time transforms a garden. We all know that. Plants grow larger, change shape. Spatial relationships change. Light usually diminishes as plants mature. Colors change with the seasons. While these changes can be observed with all plants, they are perhaps most visible with herbaceous perennials, which display all their changes in a single season, emerging from the earth in spring, maturing, flowering, then dying in fall.

But more subtle alterations occur in the appearance of plantings during the growing season. The crystal clear light of spring and early summer morphs into a moving spotlight of sun by high summer, bleaching colors at mid-day, lessening contrasts of shape and form, generally blurring differences in the character of plants.

Weather conditions too make for quite dramatic changes in appearance. The photo above was made in my Rosemont garden on a hot, very humid, windy day in late July 2003. You can see drama in the wind buffeting the Calamagrostis acutiflora 'Karl Foerester', introducing an element of chaos and excitment, the haze of humidity in the air, especially in the background, tinting the trees slightly grey-blue, the foreshadowing of autumn in the fading blossom of the Persicaria polymorpha as the cloud-white plumes become spotty with brown of early decay, in contrast with the vitality of Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium maculatum 'Gateway') in full bloom - shades of those hot scirocco winds in Italy (but this is in the Delaware River Valley).

The tranquillity of the second photo, of the same scene, taken almost a year later in 2004, but in early summer, serves to emphasize the dramatic nature of the first, and clearly demonstrates how local climatic conditions can change the nature of your garden.


In the second image, the cool temperature, still air, low humidity, freshness of foliage, and the vitality and unblemished colors of newly grown cells - in contrast to the fading white bloom of the persicaria in the first photo - lend a peacefulness and clarity totally different from the first. I'd even go so far as to say the weather, light, wind, humidity, and time of year are as much a part of the garden scene as the plants. They're all part of a whole, but you have to look at the whole, not just the parts, to see it.

More obviously, the tree (Robinia pseudoacacia 'Freesia'), has grown taller over the intervening year, the Joe Pye Weed, so prominent in the first image, hasn't yet attained height and is totally invisible behind the persicaria, as is the calamagrostis, yet the catmint (Nepeta 'Walker's Low') has fattened into glorious clumps of gray with dozens of ascending purple spires.

All of this is obvious to anyone who looks, possibly even banal. But for me it's emblamatic of the mystery of the interrelatedness of everything living. Starting with energy from sunlight, water, earth, the human eye and hand, life in all its varied forms.

The last photo, taken later in the summer of 2004, shows the same scene in larger context. Here the rapidity of growth is even more evident. The catmint is spreading like a sea, the Sedum 'Herbstfreude' is in bloom, and a new area of the garden has been planted in the distance to the left. The changes that have taken place in just over one year are striking, perhaps even threatening a return to total wildness, and demonstrate just how precarious is the order of a garden, calling out for the gardener, who, of course, is part of all this too.