Peterborough Parks: Different Styles and Influences for Different Parks

The recent rains have breathed life and color back into the parks in Peterborugh. This is the Pavilion Garden at Depot Park. It has a very high proportion of annuals. I think of the waved yew hedges bordering this planting like a gargantuan pot for a huge container planting. It changes dramatically each year.

Susannah, Mollie and Laura stop working long enough to pose for a quick photo.

The planter at Peter's Gate at Depot Park

This garden at Putnam Park is three years old and beginning to fill in nicely.

There is a "block" style of planting used here like Piet Oudolf's earlier work which has influenced this planting. This garden is weighted toward grasses and perennials. One of the few annuals, Verbena bonariensis self seeds throughout the garden.

 The planter at Putnam Park

The Boccelli Garden was influenced by the "succession" planting philosophy of Christopher Lloyd and Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter. There is a mixture of cut-back shrubs, perennials, grasses, annuals, biennials and bulbs in this planting.

Teixeira Park's Ruin Garden has mostly native plants that attract birds, butterflies and pollinators. I think of Teixeira Park as the "wild" park in Peterborough. We tend to let the plants "duke it out" in this garden. Calamagrostis brachytricha, was one of the few exotic plants I used in this garden. Early on, I thought it might take over the garden, but as the other plants have filled in, it has not been able to handle the competition of the natives and is slowly being crowded out.

 The sunny East Garden at Teixeira Park is just a year old. It has a high proportion of native American prairie plants-- again attractive to birds and pollinators. It is looking a bit sparse its first season but thankfully almost all the plants survived the winter.

The new West Garden at Teixeira Park is quite shady. Mostly natives, like the rest of Teixeira Park, it has a very wild feel to it. Both the East and West Gardens incorporate a "blended" style of planting much like Piet Oudolf's most recent work.

Turtle Pond Again

Three years ago, I did a post about Turtle Pond at my wife's family's cabin in Wells, Maine. I never tire of observing the plants and wildlife here and it seemed time for another post. Every year, I do some subtle editing of the plants along the edge of the pond to reveal and frame the views from the house and deck. Theses three photographs are in order looking left to right from the deck. There is much to learn about textures of foliage and the tapestry of how plants mingle in nature. This is a pond that expands when beavers periodically dam the brook that drains the pond. Many of the trees, mostly red maples, that where around the pond were drowned and died leaving skeletons that are bird magnets. Many mornings we wake up to find a Great Blue Heron sailing off the pond.

I have been studying the work of Peit Oudolf in his most recent book, Planting: A New Perspective, and his work in the ground at The High Line in Manhattan and I am struck at how his most recent gardens replicate how plants intertwine in nature. I am seeing it here at Turtle Pond and in many of the fields and wetlands I am noticing on bike rides in the southern coast of Maine.

The challenge for me is how to make this naturalistic style work in my own garden, especially the woodland garden. Several of the public gardens in Peterborough that would benefit from this style: the new garden at Putnam Park and the three gardens at Teixeira Park. This method of planting doesn't use blocks of plants, like a Gertrude Jekyll style or even Oudolf's earlier work, which is fairly easy to imagine creating. Plants in nature have drifts, singles, intermingling and every combination in between. It is constantly fluctuating and evolving depending on light, water, soil conditions, weather  and perhaps most importantly, survival of the fittest.

New "Layered" Plantings at Teixeira Park

The Ruin Garden at Teixeira Park has had five years to settle down and fill in. The dozen Malus 'Prariefire' trees along the sidewalk have gotten larger and fruited well. The theme has always been to be a wild garden, attracting birds and butterflies. A common complaint was that the garden felt isolated in the park and the suggestion was to add plantings on the outside of the granite walls of the Ruin Garden to soften them. My thought has always been that as the granite ages and the plants spill out, the garden will mature and its hidden nature will beckon visitors to enter and explore the garden; that being partially concealed was part of the allure. 

But after careful consideration, we decided to plant the two triangular areas formed by the pathways at each end of the park. The East end is full sun and the West end is partial shade. I wanted to continue the wild theme and the paths, like the granite walls in the Ruin garden, made the boundaries very clear, which from a maintenance perspective is a good thing. We would now have three related gardens with overlapping plant lists that would talk to each other and create a repetition of gardens over the entire park as seen from the road. Hopefully the Ruin Garden wouldn't feel isolated, but rather, integrated into the landscape.

The Ruin Garden at Teixeira Park

Waking toward the West Garden from the Ruin Garden

The Part-Shade West Garden at Teixeira Park

The Sidewalk Looking toward the East Garden--Malus 'Prariefire' to the right

The East Garden at Teixeira Park

I have spent many hours studying Piet Oudolf's work in books and have seen three of his designs in person: the Glasshouse Borders at Wisley in England, The High Line and the Gardens of Remembrance in Manhattan. I was particularly  interested in his "layered" approach to planting that Noel Kingsbury describes in the book Landscapes in Landscapes. The first layer is the "martix planting of ground-covering, relatively low growing plants. The next layer is the "island plants where irregularly shaped beds are planted with a mixture of grasses (and in my case, also perennials) for a late-summer-to-winter period of interest." The final layer is "the scatter plants, taller species, often colorful or with distinct structure." We also added trees and shrubs with colorful fruit and bulbs for interest in the early spring. Below is the plant list. Time will tell if our planting will be successful.

The East Garden Plant List

Trees/Shrubs
Viburnum dentatum 'Blue Muffin'

Matrix Planting
Sesleria autumnalis
Heuchera villosa 'Autumn Bride'
Aster macrophyllus

Island Plants
Helianthus occidentalis
Liatris ligulistylis
Monarda fistulosa
Solidago speciosa
Sporobolus heterolepsis
Solidago rigida

Scatter Plants
Eupatorium purpureum
Helianthus salicifolius
Sorghastrum nutans
Silphium perfoliatum

Bulbs
Camassia leichtlinii 'Blue Danube'
Chionodoxa sardensis
Tulipa sylvestris

The West Garden Plant List

Trees/Shrubs
Cornus mas

Matrix Planting

Sesleria autumnalis

Heuchera villosa 'Autumn Bride'

Aster macrophyllus

Island Plants

Helianthus stromusus

Aster divaricatus

Sporobolus heterolepsis

Scatter plants

Eupatorium purpureum

Aruncus aethusifolia

Aralia racemosa

Bulbs
Camassia leichtlinii 'Blue Danube'
Chionodoxa sardensis
Hyacinthoides non-scripta
Tulipa sylvestris

Training the Eye on the High Line

I visited the High Line in Manhattan for the fourth time lat month. There is always a lot to learn observing these public plantings and it was great to finally see them in full bloom during the summer. I was focusing on the way the plants were put together by Oudolf: the combinations of contrasting textures woven together in a very naturalistic way. There is a repetition of plants but they are interspersed almost randomly, rather than planted in the waves that Gertrude Jekyll might have employed nearly a century ago. The prairie plantings in the Chelsea Grasslands gave me ideas for the new rain garden at Putnam Park and the Ruin Garden at Teixeira Park while the new woodland plantings at Falcone Flyover has inspired ideas for the new woodland-edge plantings at Teixeira Park and in my own garden.

Classic Oudolf combination: Echinacea purpurea and Eryngium yuccifolium

 Another view of Echinacea purpurea and Eryngium yuccifolium in the Chelsea Grasslands

Grass and Perennial Combination

Monarda fistulosa ‘Claire Grace’, Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’ and Rudbeckia subtomentosa

Heuchera ‘Amethyst Mist’ and a grass in the Philip A. and Lisa Maria Falcone Flyover

Epimediums, Pachysandra procumbens, Liriope muscari ‘Densiflora’, ferns and Asarum canadense

Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’ below the huge leaves of Magnolia macrophylla var. ashei

Glasshouse Borders at Wisley

The Glasshouse Entrance with Beech Columns in Grass and Garden

New Tom Staurt-Smith Plantings

Stuart-Smith Bed with Carex muskingumensis along Beech Hedge

Glasshouse Border Designed by Piet Oudolf. Salvia in the Foreground and Sambucus nigra 'Gerda' in Flower Beyond.

Pholmis tuberosa 'Amazone' with Veronicastrum Waiting to Bloom

A River of Molina caerulea 'Transparent' With Red Foliage of Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple'

Calamagrostis brachytricha and Sanguisorba menziesii Provide Texture Before Bloom

The Best of English Gardens tour began yesterday with a visit to Wisley, the flagship garden of the RHS. A new glasshouse has been completed since I last visited in 2007. The Glasshouse Borders, designed by Piet Oudolf, had already been installed when I was last there. I was impressed at how the new gardens surrounding the glasshouse designed by English gardener Tom Stuart-Smith complimented and transitioned from the Oudolf borders so well.

The Glasshouse Borders are a pair of deep gardens that flank a central grass panel leading the visitor from the highest point at Wisley down to the new state-or-the-art glasshouse. The plant palette is typical of Oudolf and is planted in rivers that diagonally intersect the central grass panel. Pholmis tuberosa 'Amazone', Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple, Cornus kousa var. chinensis and Salvia x sylvestris 'Dear Anja' were the primary plants in bloom yesterday.

The new gardens designed by Stuart-Smith embrace a semicircular pool adjacent to the glasshouse. Near the entrance to the Glasshouse, he designed a series a rectangular panels of lawn and herbacous plantings punctuated by tall geometric beech columns. The beech theme is repeated in the low sweeping hedges that follow the curves of the paths and beds around the pool. The gardens are planted in interlocking drifts in a style very reminiscent of the Oudolf.

Tom Stuart-Smith's planting is a bold, yet simple, design that seamlessly transitions to the Glasshouse Borders and is an indicator, in my mind, of Stuart-Smith's respect for Oudolf and lack of ego.