A View From a Post Office

View from the Peterborough Post Office with Bridge over the Nubanusit River Beyond

View From the Street

Close up

Nubanusit Terrace is a wedge of land between the Peterborough Post Office and the Nubanusit River on Grove Street. This pocket park has had a granite bench with a tree lilac in the center for many years but was never an inviting place to sit and enjoy the river because it had no buffer from the street.

In 2002, we created a very simple formal entrance to the park that has turned out to be many people in Peterborough's favorite garden. It is three small rectangular beds with a blue stone and granite cobblestone edged entrance. The perimeter of each bed has a low hedge of Taxus media 'Hicksii' on the street side and Buxus x 'Green Mountain' on the inside.

Each bed has two shows that last nearly the entire year. The spring show is peaking this week and is a garden of white bulbs: Narcissus 'Stainless', Tulipa 'Maureen', Leucojum aestivum 'Gravetye Giant', Anenome blanda 'White Splendour' and Muscari botryoides f. album. Each year we add about 50 tulips to keep the display full. The summer show is a mass planting of Russian sage, Perovskia atriplicifolia. The grey foliage and blue flower spikes are stunning from July to October. When the flowers fade, they are an excellent scaffolding for frost in the early winter. I usually shovel the snow off the hedges each snowfall. It protects the hedges and the green walls produce a pleasing pattern throughout the winter months. Two years ago, we had our first occasion of yew-hedge-burning when the sidewalks were salted during the winter. Fortunately, we have had success protecting the hedges with burlap in the late autumn.

Nubanusit Terrace is a great example how less can often create more. The simple hedges are elegant and do not compete with the complex beauty of the Boccelli Garden down the street and the flower boxes on the bridge that are abundantly planted with annuals each Memorial Day by another volunteer gardening group in Peterborough called the Community Garden Project.