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A Very Private Small Garden
by Mary Jasch
On Paula Manchester's quarter-acre corner lot, every plant and sculpted bed counts.
Come enjoy Paula Manchester's very private garden on May 7 as part of the Garden Conservancy's Open Day Program.
Enter the garden through the white wooden gate on a stone path. Head toward a water garden on a berm, complete with falls, under a Norway maple. Manchester hauled and installed the soil and rocks and built the berm herself. The raised garden and waterfall add interest to the setting, giving azaleas and wildflowers root room and an edge in absorbing water. Water plants are “tall feathery things to shade the fish and a lily." Sparrows sit in the viburnum and drink from the waterfall.
Bermed beds flow into each other around the Cape Cod house. Except for the front yard, lawn has been reduced to pathways. Just beyond the waterfall and dogwood, beds consist of Korean spice, young yarrow as ground cover, larkspur, azaleas and viburnum. “I start larkspur in pots and get them nice and thick then bring them out,"ť says Manchester. “It's important on a corner to get slight berming and contour up. That perspective makes the garden look so much larger."
In the far corner, holly bushes, viburnums, bulbs, and peonies fill a triangular area. Hellebores swath the ground. Tall hydrangeas will soon be their backdrop.
This garden continues to the back yard along the entire length of the property. It becomes a narrow woodland of varying plant habitats that offer privacy, blossoms and fragrance. A honeysuckle-covered bower signals a stone path that rambles through the shady part that Manchester says was a challenge. Evergreen Sarcococca covers the ground. She likes to bring its fragrant June blossoms indoors.
Trees and shrubs make this woodland - holly, purple plum, evergreen Prague viburnum, her neighbor's blue spruce, columnar box and rhododendron, a spot of vibrant white-variegated Euonymous fortunei, and Zephirine Drouhin, an old-fashioned thornless climbing rose and hellebores. These tough woody plants all have a delicate appearance, for they were clipped to be seen through.
Downslope toward a distant bright spot with variegated holly and a white, ivy-arbored semi-secluded bench to sit and contemplate, the visitor strolls past Chinese witch hazel, hydrangea, Buttercup winter hazel, a tender Japanese apricot, and Himalayan white birch “that doesn't get borers as much as others."ť
Manchester's office faces this part of the garden. This working woman's busy schedule requires solitude in a peaceful setting. In winter, Ms. Manchester, who has a PhD and specializes in Kant, writes for philosophy journals. She is involved with Community Care Givers for seniors, which she began in '86, and owns and operates Garden Places, a full-time garden design-install business she started in 2000. “I don't want to see people's cars. Enclosure is very important to me. People can peek through and see things and that's ok."ť
Her philosophy on gardens is elegant. “Landscaping is on flat ground with shrubbery. In gardening, you look for form and the plants forming a structure all around a house, where the house sits in the middle of a garden. It's small connected spaces." This goes back to the 18th century English concept called “The Genius of the Place,"ť with the idea to integrate landscape forms.
In the backyard, tall Cryptomeria japonica 'Yoshino,' Japanese cedar, and saucer magnolia vie for sky. This lot seems large due to the variety of private spaces that Manchester has created. She chooses plants that grow well in small gardens, such as Japanese hemlock that grows to 30 feet, for texture and shape, bloom and fragrance, and to look good all year round.
Tucked away in a corner array of raised beds, the lady of the house grows food. Espaliered apples, clematis, sweet peas and three kinds of grapes share a fence above Carolina silver bell, lilies and iris. A central crescent-shaped bed grows the edibles.
Next to the garage and driveway is the softest tree – Cryptomeria elegans with bronzy tips and fine foliage that holds the dew. Just across the path that leads back to the house is its more emerald twin. Privacy is paramount here. Everything is edged with fence, including the driveway where white quince grows in the narrow shrub borders.
“Repetition is very important. It gives a serenity behind the variety of plants. I've got to have it so I get a coherent look."
Manchester plans on redoing the understory of the treescape along the side street with carpet roses and low azaleas in a sweeping curve. Korean pine, Japanese umbrella pine and viburnums form the canopy.
From one hidden spot to the next, on subtle paths the garden goes. On the diagonal back into the yard, this short, shady path is the perfect transition from woodsy to cultivated. In early April, spanking-white Blood Root grows.
Ms. Manchester was not a gardener until she moved to East Setauket 24 years ago. Undaunted, she studied books and sketched gardens right on her photos. She took courses at New York Botanical Garden. She emerged with a niche for her creativity, creating gardens with an eye for structure, shape, and form, and interest over four seasons. Her plants work as hard as she does - like Rhododendron 'Windbeam' that takes the cold down to minus 20 and its leaves won't curl, and Lilac 'Superba' that blooms deep pink twice in spring and fall.
“It was a corner lot with no privacy. The only plants here were the dogwood and three maples. I started taking pictures and looking at things. I knew nothing about plants then. Now people in the neighborhood stop by and bring their families on holidays. I have a lot of people coming to look at my garden."ť
Tips:
Take photos and draw on them.
Look at your house and the surrounding area.
Use your neighbor's plants in your views.
Sculpt. Contour. Berm.
Paula Manchester's Garden
14 Wendover Road
East Setauket, Long Island
Open Day: May 7
www.gardenconservancy.org or 888-842-2442
Two other nearby private gardens are also open May 7. Here is one: Sue Bottigheimer's Garden
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published April 29, 2005
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