SAMUEL H. WILLIAMSON  ASSOCIATES

This garden was built for a farmhouse that is now part of a hillside neighborhood. The house seemed perched on the site. Two walls were built to reshape the slope and anchor the house to its new garden setting. A concrete wall, with piers that echo the wooden piers on the house’s wraparound porch, runs along the sidewalk. This lifted the grade and created gentler slopes that were better suited to planting. The slope was then planted with mixed shrubs that provide color and texture all year round. The second wall is dry-stack basalt that made a flat area around two sides of the house, connecting the front garden to the back terrace. This area became a stepping stone path planted with creeping groundcovers and edged with lush shade loving plants. We wanted the planting along the porch to recall a traditional farmhouse planting. If it had been sunny we might have selected delphinium, hollyhocks, etc., but because of its shady aspect we planted purple monkshood, meadow rue, fall-blooming anemone, and apricot foxgloves. The perennials were anchored with hydrangeas that were reused from the site.

The upper stone path breaks through the wall at two points and basalt stairs lead you down into the lower, sun filled garden. Here perennials in shades of blue and purple accented with yellow bloom all summer long against a backdrop of shrubs. On the sloping portion of this garden we reused mossy boulders from the site to create a rock garden. By recycling the stones we able to give the garden a sense of age in its first season.

Bulbs of all kinds and colors were planted in and among the perennials and shrubs. Site features like a teak bench, planted urns and custom made wrought iron give this garden the finishing touches that make it the perfect place for a plant and garden lover to linger.