Jean Johnson Gee has been a source of unending inspiration in my life. Lucky for me, I'm her daughter in law. Though currently sheltered in place, she brings worldly intelligence, vitality, curiosity, kindness and hope to all who know her. She has traveled the world studying gardens, and has served for years as a board member for Gamble Gardens in Palo Alto. Below is an essay she shared with me about her California home gardening experience.
Despite the exotic lushness of California gardening, as a transplanted Easterner, I still yearned for an Anne Hathaway type English garden such as I had known in my childhood. A few years ago I attempted to create such a garden in Palo Alto.
The distinguishing features of the home in which I had grown up were a rather large English cottage style house set on an acre of gardens with many arbors and trellises, a fish pond and a wooded area. Off the living room was a white pillared, brick porch cornered with latticed roses, furnished in white wicker and Adirondack chairs and surrounded by huge established Oaks, Mountain Ash, Japanese Cedars, rhododendrons, Azalea, Mountain laurel, Lilacs, and a variety of other verdant specimen trees and shrubs.
Lawns bordered the house and a small perennial bed filled with old-fashioned favorites near the fishpond was the focal point from the dining room widows and its smaller brick porch. Beyond the pool rose trellises with benches gave way to a grape arbor as the kitchen garden was approached and both screened from view the more sizable back garden devoted to vegetables, fruit trees, cutting flowers and current bushes.
A flower filled rock garden edged part of the long uphill graveled driveway. On the other side of the drive was a shallow ravine filled with trees, ferns and other deep shade loving plants. The drive separated the house from a tree lined sunny knoll and then circled a dark juniper bush on a round grassy plot to arrive at the garage before returning to the front porch entrance. It was a beautifully designed garden on a partly wooded hillside home site and I loved it.
How to translate the essence of this to a small tract house on a tiny lot in Palo Alto was the challenge. With the help of an understanding and very able garden designer, we began. The “givens” were a small white shingled California ranch set toward the front and to one side of a small almost square lot. The backyard was filled primarily with a kidney shaped pool and enclosed by a grape stake fence, which bordered most of the sides as well. Seven white birch trees lined the back, an orange and lemon tree were on the side and a large magnolia dominated the center front.
The magnolia was ringed with large stones to form a raised bed of azalea, hostas and ferns. Campanula, cyclamen and impatiens added seasonal color. A second shade bed was planted in front of the house with a central Rhododendron flanked by ferns and surrounded by pink azalea and English ivy. The front of the house was given a curving brick walkway connecting the driveway to the front porch between the two beds meeting the brick path from the sidewalk.
The remaining lawn was raised to form a tiny circular berm edged with an ivy covered fence and perennial border on the far side. A white, gated brick wall extending from the house to the lot line wall formed a corner garden. There amid lace cap hydrangeas, spring flowering bulbs and perennials was a Japanese maple.
The front porch, cornered with a Banksia rose and a fall blooming camellia was trellised against the garden wall. A soft pink brick was used for the porch and walks, with pink flagstone forming a path from the end of the porch, though the gate and up to the pink brick patio, which extended most of the length of the house.
The larger side yard adjoined the dining room and was the site of the patio that was covered with a white arbor extending from the dining room doors to the back end of the house. This was partially covered by a latticed protective cover so that the white wicker furnishings could remain all year long. The area beside the flagstone path leading to the patio on either side was reserved for gardenia, sun and shade herbs, roses and perennials. The side wall was covered with white wisteria, the chimney with bougainvillea, the corner posts of the arbor with pink jasmine and at the far end, a Cecil Berner climbing rose.
Along the side of the patio, under the bedroom windows, was a rose bed under planted with purple lantana. Looking from the patio to the back was a central perennial bed centered by a pink flowering crabapple and an Iceberg rose. This was the heat of the garden and an ever-changing pageant of color and texture.
Beyond and at the back corner of the lot was a small rock garden surrounding two of the birches and dominated by a Rhododendron amid lamium, dwarf viburnum, coral bell and columbine. A purple and a white lilac screened the side fence. Again, pink flagstone led from the patio through the garden and to the brick terrace in the back. Another smaller, but matching arbor extended across the back of the house and created a second seating area. The far end of the arbor provided a perfect spot for a white porch swing. Wisteria, one purple, one white climbed the corner of the back arbor.
The pool was surrounded by pink brick. A mini-lawn on the opposite side from the flowerbed gave a fresh green balance to the scene. The pool shed, white with louvered doors provided not only storage but a latticed potting shed area under the shade of a Texas privet and the other birches. Pittosporum provided a screen above the fence to insure privacy and greenery to the view.
The scale is small, the vistas diminished, the climate and vegetation dissimilar from my childhood home, but my garden was filled with reminders and substitutes that created a sense of serenity and beauty to soothe my nostalgic heart.
Comentários