Private Edens

Beautiful Country Gardens

Jack Staub

• Publisher: Gibbs Smith
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781423621096
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

"An intimate tour of more than twenty stunning private gardens in Virginia, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts."— Sophisticated Living In this book, garden design expert Jack Staub offers a tour of private country paradises in the Eastern United States boasting remarkable plant palettes and combinations. Anyone can find inspiration in these oases of beauty nestled in towns including Hudson, New York; Middleburg, Virginia; and Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. From a romantic garden with cottagey plantings that pays homage to the best of English garden vernacular to a splendid Eden where Maryland countryside meets Himalayan serenity, these garden paradises stand alone on their own terms and offer us examples of what we can all achieve with a modicum of respect, partnership, and imagination. "Sumptuous photographs."— The New York Times Book Review

Harmonious Convergence

Cockeysville, Maryland

I suppose every corner of the earth must have its own particular vision of paradise, rooted in a unique native vocabulary of flora and fauna, architectural vernacular, the reigning gods and spirits, even the quality of air and light and sun on water that could only take place in that particular place. So it is equally when two such visions commingle, creating a third that is a unique amalgam and, in a way, more singular than either of its predecessors. Such is the case with this property: an 1810 Maryland manor house, built of the softly hued local sandstone quarried on the land, set on thirty-five acres of farm pasture and forest, shaded by a trio of massive sycamores and sedately overlooking a small lake and quietly meandering stream.

He’s a local boy, scion of a family who respected in equal measure the cultivation of the land and the mind and spirit. She is the eldest daughter of the monarch of the tiniest of Far Eastern states: a kingdom perched amidst the highest, whitest peaks of the Himalayas. He had cows and horses and chickens as well as a polished schooling and a love of music, the arts, literature, and foreign travel in his past; she, a childhood of almost mythic pageantry and color, palaces and monasteries clinging to the sheer flanks of snow-dusted peaks and prayer flags fluttering in the wind, leavened with a proper English lady’s education.

When they wed, and he first brought her home to the Maryland countryside in which he had been raised and where he and his cousin had taken over the reins of the family business, they built a small Japanese-inspired house deep in the woods: a mossy, ferny oasis of calm. But as both aspiration and family grew, he chanced upon the nearly derelict stone house on the silted-in pond on the property on which the previous owners had planted a total of twelve trees in their forty years of occupancy. Supremely attached to their present oasis of eastern calm, she exclaimed, “You’ve got to be kidding!” He wasn’t.

Twelve years, one thousand trees and shrubs, and some major renovation and site clearing later, an inspired union of cultures has emerged: East meets West, Maryland meets the Himalayas in the most virtuosic way. The 1810 house has become the heart of a modern home with a decidedly Eastern influence that exists in total harmony with its Western origins. Former outer walls are now inner walls, giving onto a corridor of glass that wraps around a Himalayan rock and moss garden on three sides, filling the house with light.

Further out, the plant palette is strict and decidedly Eastern in its favoring of foliage form, color, and texture over blossom, with a well-edited emphasis on conifers and maples. Certainly there are azaleas and dogwoods offering bloom and a sweeping crescent of yellow iris defining one bank of the pond, but it is really the elegant juxtaposing of blue-, green-, and chartreuse-colored yews, firs, and spruces with the acid and burgundy tones of the maples, and then the careful intermingling of rocks and statuary and swaths of gravel that define this garden. Island beds adhere to the Japanese philosophy of dry garden making, “creating a garden” being actually couched in Japanese as “setting stones upright,” the stones and shaped shrubs and architectural elements mimicking mountains and streams and waterfalls, the beauty existing in the perfect balance of horizontal and vertical elements.

The result is both serene and thrilling. A graceful teahouse with a moon window crafted for moments of contemplation floats on its mirror image on the lake, a school of colorful carp swirling around it beneath the placid waters. A stone temple anchors an island of rock and conifers at the pond’s center. An immense bronze elephant of Far East Indian origins gazes contemplatively out towards a native pasture. A collection of ancient stone Buddhas inhabit the crevasses of a massive and mossy rock outcropping by the stream. Brilliant courses of white prayer flags fling their blessings into the accommodating breeze. Prayer wheels adorn columns and hang near entryways where further blessings may be cast on the house and its visitors.

As the owner so charmingly said, “Creating the garden has been in a sense like writing a tone poem. In addition to the plant material, it embraces the texture and character of water, stone, lawn, fields, ...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Passion for Plants
• Feeding the Soul
• Water Fall
• Stewards to History
• One and One Make One
• An Educator’s Eye
• Living Rooms
• Sense of Place
• A New Perspective
• Harmonious Convergence
• Divine Inspiration
• Northern Exposure
• Grace Land
• Revival Meeting
• An American Story
• Family Connection
• Manor Reborn
• One Woman, One Wilderness
• Pilgrim’s Progress
• Meadow Lark
• Developing Interest