Have a Seat at Chanticleer

Chanticleer, the pleasure garden in Wayne, PA, is right up there with Great Dixter on the creativity scale. I visited the garden last weekend while I was in Pennsylvania. Chanticleer, was once the country estate of Adolph Rosengarten, Sr. and his wife Christine who bought the property in the first decade of the last century.  Rosengarten made his fortune in the pharmaceuticals industry and in 1990 his son left the entire property with an endowment "for the enjoyment and education of the public."

Like all good gardens, Chanticleer combines choice plants with thoughtful design. Chanticleer, like Great Dixter, goes one step farther, where experimentation is the mantra. Both gardens have a vitality and energy produced by change. The creativity doesn't end with horticulture at Chanticleer. During the winter season, the staff is busy creating unique chairs and benches that are placed throughout the garden adding to the unique character of Chanticleer.

The seating at Chanticleer and Wave Hill inspired me to pay closer attention to that aspect of the garden in the Peterborough parks. About a decade ago, I designed signature Adirondack chairs for Putnam Park and the Boccelli Garden, and then several years later, Ron Higgins installed the whimsical stone benches at Teixeira Park. My feeling was that each park should have its own unique flavor and I was certainly inspired by Chanticleer.

Two Weddings and No Funeral

The Archway in the Ruin Garden

Coreopsis, Pentsemon, Butterfly Weed and Honeysuckle Vines beginning to bloom

A Nice Place for a White Wedding

The Ruin Garden at Teixeira Park has been the setting for at least two weddings in the last year I am told. West Peterborough has just undergone a revitalization and Teixeira Park is the now crown jewel of that part of town. The Ruin Garden was installed in 2007 and is now starting to settle down and is beginning to get the patina of age to its granite structure.

I think of Teixeira Park as the "wild" park in Peterborough. It abuts the Nubanusit River and we designed it to attract birds and butterflies. There are many fruit bearing trees and shrubs (crab apples, vibirnums, shadblows and dogwoods) to attract birds. Honeysuckles are now in bloom to coax the hummingbirds to their nectar. The pentsemons should bring both hummers and butterflies. Later in the season, the garden should be teaming with butterflies as the sedums, butterfly weeds, asters, liatris, goldenrods, oreganos, heleniums, solidagos and Verbena bonariensis take center stage.

Ron Higgins designed the granite wall to be inviting to children to play on. I have witnessed families reading to their young children on the walls on more than one occasion. What I didn't expect was the Ruin Garden as a wedding chapel but why not? It has a beautiful archway for the wedding couple, seating for the guests and flowers already in bloom just waiting for the wedding party to arrive.

Teixeira Park gets a New Path and Putnam Park gets a Rain Garden

Foundation for Path in Teixeira Park

Path Follows the Nubanusit River Beyond; Ruin Garden to the Right

Ruin Garden will be Connected to the Path

"Flintstone's" Picnic Area

Tree work at Putnam Park

Site of New Rain Garden

Site of the New Entrance Garden in Putnam Park

Two of the Peterborough Parks are undergoing projects this year. Both projects involve rain gardens. Rain gardens are a new concept to collect storm water and channel it into a garden that will decrease the amount of storm water that is lost to the public drainage system. Rain gardens combine environmental benefits with aesthetically pleasing plantings.

Teixeira Park is having a new pathway installed made of a permeable hard pavement that will allow water to flow through it. The pathway will loop from the sidewalk in West Peterborough. At each end of the path there will be a rain garden that will collect storm water from the street. It will be planted with plants, many of them natives, that can tolerate extremely wet conditions with periods of intermittent dry conditions. The path will connect to the Ruin Garden and a granite picnic table I like to call the "Flintstone's" table. Stone artist, Ron Higgins designed the picnic table and two benches out of huge pieces of granite. Teixeira Park was designed to have a wild theme. It has rustic granite benches throughout the park and is planted the trees, shrubs and perennials that are attractive to wildlife, particularly birds and butterflies.

The renovation of Teixeira Park is part of a larger project to revitalize West Peterorbough. New sidewalks and streetlights have been added to make that part of town much more pedestrian friendly. The project is funded by the West Peterborough TIF. A TIF is a Tax Increment Financing Plan where any additional taxes produced by new development will be put in a fund to be used to revitalize a certain section of a town. The West Peterborough TIF will be used to improve the physical infrastructure and the visual appearance of West Peterborough. They held a series of meetings with the West Peterborough TIF and members of the community and developed a plan with input from all the concerned parties.

Putnam Park will also have a new rain garden to capture run off from an abutting parking lot that has been eroding the path in the park during heavy rain storms. Our Public Works Director, Rodney Bartlett, suggested a rain garden as a solution and obtained a grant to fund the project. The park also had some tree work done to repair damage to a beautiful Pine Oak , Quercus palustris, caused by the devastating ice storm of December, 2008. Several large white and red pine trees were also removed because they were dangerous and had lost large limbs during the ice storm. We will be planting a new garden near the entrance of Putnam Park where the large pines once stood to buffer the park from the parking lot.

I will be following the progress both of these projects on my blog. If you interested in more information about rain gardens, Nigel Dunnett and Andy Clayden have written an excellent resource called, oddly enough, Rain Gardens.

The Ruin Garden at Teixeira Park

Teixeira Park is one of the public parks I work on in West Peterborough, NH. It was donated to the town of Peterborough in 1971 by Pearl Teixeira. Pearl was the widow of Louis Teixeira, a former Peterborough selectman. Louis was born on the island of Madeira and came to Peteborough in 1929. Her intention was that the park " shall be used for the increased beauty of the town of Peterborough".

The park is situated on the Nubanusit River. For many years the park was neglected but in 2006 a renovation process was begun. We decided to keep the park rather wild and to try to attract birds and wildlife. The granite wall was built by Ron Higgins, a resident of West Peterborough. Ron describes himself as a stone mason, carver and sculptor. His website is: http://www.stoneandearthworks.com/. He used granite that the town had on hand from a previous project. Ron let the stone speak to him and created this low wall with an archway. We planted the inner space with plants that would attract humming birds and butterflies. I like to call it the Ruin Garden. As the stone ages and the plants tumble over the walls, It will look more and more like an old New England foundation.

The structure looks particularly strong in the winter months. Children like to play and jump off the walls and we tried to plant the beds in a way that invited the children to play without disturbing the plantings. In future months, I'll show you how the garden progresses throughout the growing season.