A Garden Made with Passion

by Mary Jasch

In the garden of Constantine and Sally Kallas, dedication of a lifetime is evident. Theirs is a story of evolution – a story of discovery of what the land held, fate, observation and understanding, actionable acquiescence and clearing the land, but most of all Determination and Passion.

When the Kallases bought their 3.5 acres in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, in 1971, they began the transition from existing woodland to the cultivated woodland and sunny gardens of today. Stone, gravel and mossy paths crisscross planted woodland complete with a canopy of indigenous trees, an understory of planted shrubs including 1,000 rhododendron and azaleas and other delectables, an herbaceous layer of select perennials and ferns, and a forest floor of various ground covers. A bird and butterfly garden, a rock garden and sunny borders and gazebo garden thrive in gaps in the wooded landscape.

The Kallases are gentle people. He is the gardener; she is appreciator and muse. As a result, their garden is a pleasurable stroll in the woods. It’s a recreation of their dreams in the medium of plants and also a pledge to nature.

In the back yard, beds of annuals and perennials mingle near the house with Love-lies-bleeding above astilbe, pink persicaria and blue monkshood, Krossa Regal hosta, blue spruce, red Japanese maple and tall hot fuschia zinnias. Big pots of oxalis, that overwinter in the garage, line the steps. In the pond, goldfish thrived before Great Blue Herons devoured them. “Boy, they show up like the Angel of Death. They make the rounds,” Kallas says.

“This year has been amazing. I think we’re trying to revert to forest here,” he says of the 1.5 acres of woods behind the house. There lady fern and Jack-in-the-pulpit, the only wild flower that occurred there naturally from the beginning, are everywhere. Cut pine trunks edge paths of stone and moss.

“We had a little place in Pennsylvania, then moved here in 1971,” he muses. “I was a city boy. This was a compromise; I could hunt and fish here; it was still near civilization and we didn’t have to take trips up to Pike County, PA (to fish and hunt). I got here and there wasn’t a wild flower to be found. It was all Japanese honeysuckle wrapped around trees that grew like sausage links.”

In the woods behind the house, tulip poplar bend in the wind like palm trees. Hunterdon County once grew a lot of peaches and they grew tulip poplar for the baskets because of its supple wood.

Between woodland and lawn, a garden transitions from wildness to civility with American beauty bush, lots of viburnum with berries, evergreen azaleas, tall Joe-Pye Weed, and asclepias and butterflies everywhere, zinnia, spirea, rhododendron, highbush blueberry and an Eastern Tailed-Blue. A planting of mountain mint is abuzz with a swarm of beneficial insects.

The oldest garden bed is against the foundation of the house. It collects runoff from the slope above it and takes a while to drain – a Rain Garden before the term existed. Kallas doesn’t fertilize anything but potted plants. He uses compost instead. And the plants thrive. Hummingbirds visit cardinal flowers and persicaria, and butterflies visit a slew of self-seeding phlox.

“Somebody brought me some black swallowtail caterpillars – three of them and they got bigger and bigger and I haven’t seen them. We had a lot of butterflies because we have a lot of spicebush and spicebush butterflies. It’s hard to tell the difference.”

Out front an original line of pine trees kept falling down and a large weeping willow got hit by lightening, so he cut them down in 1995. This cleared area became the bird and butterfly garden where Love-Lies-Bleeding, monarda, Tatarian aster and New York Ironweed attract butterflies and dogwoods, holly and viburnum attract birds. “Aster tataricus makes light blue flowers and every stem can be a bouquet to put in a vase,” he says.

Into the Shade Garden on a path with hellebores, ferns, viburnums, Solomon Seal, Japanese Painted fern and a plethora of woodland plants on shallow soil on shale where plants get shallow-rooted and top-heavy, a catbird follows Kallas around. Usually it’s a pair of them. “Creeping myrtle I’ll never plant again. It covers wildflowers like this bloodroot.”

“I was always interested in gardening,” says Connie Kallas. “When I grew up I didn’t know anybody who lived in a one-family house. I was in the army with these rebels who didn’t understand the concept of a tenement at all. Sally and I bought our first house in Livingston and I was into gardening with the kids. I would go to Forbes Nursery (long gone) and buy stuff. It was great. I just always stayed interested in it. I made a lot of mistakes. In Livingston I planted azaleas, so when you have a Lime Rickey with lime in it, it’s an acidy taste, so I bought a bag of lime and put it on the azalea.

“I find when you come from the city you appreciate nature more. When we had guys work here and they wanted to get rid of soil they just threw it in the woods. That’s where you threw your garbage. Well that was ok in the time of Daniel Boone.”

Kallas is a Master Gardener and started a speaker’s bureau and that’s how he learned about many plants. “I did a talk on daylilies and started reading up on them and planted all the varieties. I said, ‘This is madness, stop growing them.’

“One thing I would never recommend to anybody is a rock garden. As you get up in age you have to balance yourself on the rocks and things grow up in the cracks and you can’t get them out without lifting the rocks with a crow bar. These were all tiny when I planted them.” His grows Erica, small bulbs, R. yakushimanum hybrids, sedums, dianthus and other rock garden plants.

Can you have a rock garden without rocks? “If you’re a real con artist,” he says.

In the Woodland Garden, interesting groundcovers are used: hardy begonia, Flame Creeper azalea, ferns, mayapple, sweet woodruff (“It’s great groundcover because if it gets in a flower bed, it’s very shallow rooted and you just pull it out.”)

Favored trees: Magnolia ‘Bracken’s Brown Beauty, Edith Bogue, Elizabeth and saucers, Carolina Silverbell.

Favored shrubs: spicebush, Clerodendrum Harlquin Glory Bower, native and fragrant azalea arborescens, Hydrangea arboresence ‘Annabelle,’ the small oakleaf hydrangea ‘Snow Queen’ (“The fall color is beautiful. A ray of sunlight behind them is like a neon sign.”) Sometimes when a rhododendron dies, he plants a hydrangea instead. His best rhododendrons are ‘Solidarity’ propagated by Hank Shannon.

“Many times you see the deer up against the fence, very plaintive like the little match girl. My yellow ladies slippers didn’t come up this year – too many weeds. My original wildflowers were 35 cents; ladies slipper was 65 cents. Today it’s $65. The pain in the neck here is Ostrich fern; it takes over. It’s stoloniferous.”

On moving on: “When we moved here, this was all pine trees, reminiscent of the Maine woods. That was what sold me on this property. But I discovered they were 10-foot on center so they were not native. As they were growing, the bottom branches were dying so I constantly had to saw them. They started toppling over so eventually most fell down and I cut the remaining ones, but planting with all the roots in the ground I had to elevate the plants a little.” So he built raised beds and filled them with soil.

“Every now and then we have to straighten out the beds with fieldstone walls. The nice thing is every now and then I think to make this one bigger to give me some more room to plant. I went to a sale at Buck Gardens and got a nice Ninebark.”

**Photos by Mary Jasch unless otherwise noted