Touring Chanticleer – Part 2

If you’re rested up from the first half of our Chanticleer Garden tour, let’s keep going so we can fit in the rest of the garden before closing time.

We’ve headed out of Bell’s Woodland and up the hill through the long meadows to arrive at the Ruin Garden, which sits on the foundation of Minder House, which was the 1933 wedding gift home of Adolph Rosengarten Jr. and his wife Janet. In 1999, under Chanticleer’s former director Chris Woods, Minder House was razed and its memory evoked by landscape architect Mara Baird in a set of three stone-walled garden rooms that brilliantly capture its spirit.  Let’s head through the “front door” into the Library.

01-Minder House Ruin Garden

A Princeton-educated lawyer, Adolph Jr. would certainly have had a rich collection of books in his library.  In fact, later in life he endowed the University of Pennsylvania with a generous bequest in support of its libraries. He did not rest on the family money, but became involved in community. He was still a young man living here in the early years of the Depression when he spearheaded the movement to remove a slum in Wayne and establish a public housing project there. He also served during the Second World War as a decorated intelligence officer for the U.S. army, lending his linguistic expertise to the decoding of German messages in the top-secret Ultra spy unit at Bletchley Park, near London, England.  After the war, he returned to Chanticleer, resumed his law practice, and subsequently earned two post-graduate degrees at the University of Pennsylvania – the last, at age 70, a doctorate in French military history.  This remarkable man endowed Chanticleer with a foundation that continues to fund the garden to this day, with several family members on the board and the remarkable Bill Thomas serving as Executive Director and Head Gardener.  Earlier, I’d persuaded Bill to stop for a moment so I could praise him here to his smiling face!

Chanticleer Executive Director Bill Thomas

It’s fitting that that someone like Bill, whose background was in education at nearby Longwood Gardens, should run Chanticleer. For though there are no labels whatsoever to mar the beautiful landscape, education is very much a focus here, as Adolph Rosengarten Jr. stressed in his will.  Throughout the gardens, there are artful boxes containing comprehensive plant lists available for a $2 fee; the lists are also offered free of charge online.  This is the most painstaking garden inventory, each section the responsibility of a small staff of full-time horticulturists who have worked at Chanticleer since the garden was opened to the public in 1993, three years after Adolph Jr’s death.

But back to the Ruin.  This is the cleverly-named Pool Room, with faces by sculptor Marcia Donahue partly submerged in the raised pool.

02-Pool Room in the Ruin Garden

And this long, black granite banquet “table” in the Great Room is a brilliant water feature that reflects the plants within and outside the Ruin.

03-Water table in Great Hall

Head out of the Ruin and you find yourself at the top of the sprawling Gravel Garden.  Walk down the steps and you’ll see hundreds and hundreds of plants that thrive quite happily with little water.  I could gladly have spent all day in this garden.

04-The Gravel Garden

Shown below are a few of the Gravel Garden’s jewels.  Clockwise, from upper left:  Spanish poppy – Papaver rupifragum; Anthemis tinctoria ‘Susanna Mitchell’ & Orlaya grandiflora, Eremurus x isabellinus ‘Cleopatra’, and Viscaria oculata ‘Blue Angel’.

05-Gravel Garden Plants

The reality of gravel, of course, is that weeds love to grow in it as much as the lovely, welcome self-seeders. Here, with her back to me, is the Gravel Garden’s talented gardener Lisa Roper (also Chanticleer’s excellent photographer) and intern Kirsten Liebl, working to keep the gardens weed-free.

06-Weeding the Gravel

This path through the Gravel Garden features, at left, pale penstemon (P. pallidus) and tall yellow Carolina bushpea (Thermopsis villosa). At right is airy white Orlaya grandiflora with chartreuse Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’ and Crinum bulbispermum.  At the rear is Yucca rostrata, a rare (for Pennsylvania) native of the hot southwest desert.

07-Path in Gravel Garden

This arbor offers welcome shade and a good view of some of the Gravel Garden and the Rock Ledge beyond.

08-Pergola looking onto gravel garden

Look at the profusion of colour on the Rock Ledge leading down to the Pond Garden. Monet would have been delighted to set up his easel here!  The dark purple salvia is Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’.  Other flowers include red corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas), orange ‘Cleopatra’ foxtail lilies (E. x isabellinus) and bright-pink (Silene armeria)

09-Rock Ledge

Now we’re down at the linked ponds, with this delicious crescent of ‘Caradonna’ meadow sage, silvery Artemisia ludoviciana and a row of bobbing ‘Lucy Ball’ alliums.  More yellow Thermopsis villosa rises on the other side of the pond.  The Pond Garden and nearby Asian Woods are the domain of gardener Joe Henderson, who waves from a cart as he drives by.

10-One of the four ponds

There are lots of big koi in the pond and one blows bubbles as it swims past.

11-Koi

‘Pink Sensation’ waterlilies grace the largest pond.  Like the other three, it’s surrounded by a diverse roster of marginal aquatic plants.

12-Waterlilies in a pond

Variegated sweet flag (Acorus calamus ‘Variegatus’) makes a lovely scrim at the edge of the pond, where its roots can remain nice and wet.

13-Sweet flag

The Pond Garden features many beautiful irises, but none lovelier than Iris spuria ‘Cinnabar Red’.

14-Iris spuria 'Cinnabar Red'

This pondside path is flanked by deep beds of luscious June perennials.

15-Pond Garden Plantings

Candelabra primroses thrive in the damp primrose meadow adjacent to the ponds.

16-Candelabra Primroses

More moisture-loving beauties grace the bog near the ponds including, clockwise from upper left: pitcher plants (Sarracenia leucophylla) and (Sarracenia flava); purple marsh orchid (Dactylorhiza spp.); and pink ladyslipper (Cypripedium reginae).

17-Carnivorous Plants & Orchids

And where there are ponds, there are always red-winged blackbirds keeping an eye out for visitors that come too close to their nests.
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18-Red-winged blackbird

On my way from the ponds into the Asian Woods, I pass a large bed featuring this lovely vignette. So quietly perfect: golden catalpa (C. bignonioides ‘Aurea’) underplanted with golden-striped bamboo (Pleioblastus auricoma) with a swath of ‘Dallas Blues’ switch grass in front (Panicum virgatum).

19-Catalpa outside Asian Woods

Now we’re in the cool Asian Woods, heading toward that lovely bridge.  Look at all the trilliums – how lovely it must have been in May!

20-The Bamboo Bridge in Asian Woods

Check out the drifts of ‘Ebony Night’ black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus) and dwarf goatsbeard (Aruncus aethusifolius).  What beautiful textures here — I need another hour, at least.  Sadly, there’s just enough time to turn around and head out again.

21-Ophiopogon & Aruncus in Asian Woods

I pass the fun, leopard-patterned chairs that sit on the great lawn.

22-Leopard chairs on Great Lawn

Gazing up through the sweeping border beneath the Gravel Garden, the main house looms ahead.

23-View up Great Lawn to House

Just one glance back at the brilliant combination of ‘Flamenco Mix’ red-hot pokers (Kniphofia uvaria) with ‘Lucy Ball’ giant alliums.  More Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ here, plus white oxeye daisies.  Genius!  Thank you, Lisa Roper.

24-Kniphofia 'Flamenco Mix' & Allium 'Lucy Ball'

On the way up to the house, I note the sinuous, maze-like Serpentine, intended to celebrate the beauty of agricultural crops. This summer, it’s planted with waving, swishing – and, yes, beautiful – winter rye (Secale cereale).

25-Winter rye in the Serpentine

And now I’m at the back of the main house, once the home of Adolph Rosengarten Sr. and his wife Christine. Earlier in spring, this wildflower lawn would have been filled with daffodils, which are now ripening in the long grass.

26-House and Wildflower Lawn

 

Let’s take a walk along the terrace, past the clay urn draped with ‘Buttercup’ golden ivy (Hedera helix), and all the other brilliant, gold-leafed plants that light up this space even on a cloudy day. And don’t they look superb with the mauve alliums?

27-House Terrace Plantings

Each of the many urns and pots on the terrace is exquisitely designed.  This one features a simple mix of variegated Japanese sedge (Carex oshimensis ‘Evergold’), Winter Orchid wallflowers (Erysimum) and Side Show Copper Apricot African daisies (Osteospermum).  The gold-leafed shrub behind is a ‘Golden Sunshine’ willow (Salix sachalinensis).

28-Container near Croquet Lawn

The swimming pool looks so cool and welcoming.  In fact, I did take a refreshing swim in this pool on a hot summer evening several years ago, when Chanticleer hosted the awards dinner at the annual symposium of the Garden Writers Association. They even provided bathing suits for those of us who’d forgotten ours at home!  What fun (there might have been a little wine consumed…..)  It was later in the season then, so the wonderful roses like ‘Dr. Huey’ and pink ‘Eglantyne’ here weren’t in bloom.

29-Swimming Pool

Big agaves (A. americana) pick up the aqua colour of the water and the copper rooftop of the poolhouse.

30-Agaves

Each end of the swimming pool terrace features delphiniums and other classic English-garden-style perennials.

31-Flower Beds in Pool Area

But it’s closing time, finally, and I float back to my car on a lovely cloud of euphoria.  Together, Adolph Rosengarten Jr.and the board and staff have succeeded brilliantly in making Chanticleer feel like the most welcoming of private homes – with the best gardens ever.  Thank you!

Chanticleer is open 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. The garden is also open on Friday evenings until 8:00 p.m. from May through Labor Day. The 2014 season begins on April 2nd and ends on November 2nd.  Check the website for more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Touring Chanticleer – Part 1

Of all the public gardens I’ve visited around the world (and that list is very long), there is one that rises gracefully above all the rest. Not for the property, though this Pennsylvania estate is second to none. Not for the labels and signage, because there aren’t any (more on that later). And not for the gift shop, because this garden doesn’t need one; it is a gift in itself. There is no Victorian carpet bedding, no rows of annuals being trialled, no visitor’s tram, no snack bar.  There are simply extraordinarily creative plantings, superbly rendered designs, intellectual interpretations of the landscape’s unique sense of place, and excellence all round.  This is Chanticleer Garden, located in the hamlet of Wayne in Radnor Township, a half-hour drive from Philadelphia.

Earlier this June, I spent a charmed day wandering the hills and rills and valleys of Chanticleer.  I brought a lunch from my hotel, but hours later had to remind myself to sit down in one of the many colourful chairs to eat it, so worried was I that I might miss a garden or two before I had to leave.

Chanticleer-The Rock Ledge

Chanticleer was originally the 1913 country home of Adolph G. Rosengarten Sr. (b.1870), whose grandfather George, the 21-year old scion of a German banking family, had founded a successful chemical business in Philadelphia in 1823 that produced, among other products, the anti-malarial drug quinine. Though not on the vast scale of Longwood, the home and garden another wealthy chemical magnate, Pierre Du Pont, had built 6 years earlier in nearby Wilmington, Delaware, Chanticleer took its place as one of the fabled mansions along the Main Line rail route, where Philadelphia society went to escape the summer heat.  Perhaps reflecting his sizable investment, Adolph Sr. named his new home after the fictional Chanteclere from the William Makepeace Thackeray novel The Newcomes, a grand house that was “mortgaged up to the very castle windows”. In French, Chanticleer means rooster, and that literary allusion is seen in the many original rooster statues and motifs around the estate, left, and also in the rooster combs in California sculptor Marcia Donahue’s playfully suggestive ceramic bamboo culms.

Chanticleer Rooster & Marcia Donohue Sculpture

In 1927, the year that the Rosengartens merged their company with Merck & Co., Adolph Sr., with his wife Christine, son Adolph Jr. (b.1906) and daughter Emily (b.1910), made Chanticleer their full-time residence.  In time he built houses for both children as wedding gifts and it is at Emily’s house near the gate (now the garden’s administrative building) where my tour begins.

In the kitchen courtyard that acts as an entrance to the garden is a collection of beautifully planted containers

01-Teacup Garden Entrance Pots

Pass through the gate from the kitchen courtyard and you reach the charming Teacup Garden, a courtyard centred by a formal parterre set around the cup-shaped, Italianate fountain that gives the space its name.  Gardener Dan Benarcik, who oversees the Teacup and the Tennis Garden below the house, has described the feeling he wants to convey here as “lush formal”, maintaining the geometry of formal design but using lush tropical plants in the beds and containers.  Though it’s early in the season for these summer heat-lovers, you can appreciate the brilliant foliage choices, including the gold-toned bromeliad Aechmea blanchetiana and the ‘Black Coral’ taros (Alocasia).  Formality is emphasized with the four standard silver willows (Salix alba ‘Sericea’) in the corners.

02-Teacup Fountain Garden

At the other end of the house, windmill palms (Trachycarpus fortunei) in gorgeous glazed pots stand sentinel in front of French doors.  The smaller pots contain golden scheffleras (S. actinophylla ‘Amate Soleil’).  At right is a split-leaf philodendron (P. selloum ‘Hope’).

03-Visitor Center Palms

Now let’s head around Emily’s house to the front so we can make our way down to the gardens below. Gaze up as you head for the stairs: those brilliant chartreuse boughs of the ‘Frisia’ black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) will give you a little clue as to the delicious colour sensibilities ahead.

04-Upper Terrace & Robinia pseudoacacia 'Frisia'

On the sweep of lawn flanking the long borders sit a pair of purple chairs under a huge jack oak tree (Quercus alba x Q. montana). Colourful chairs are a staple at Chanticleer; set in the most picturesque places, they provide a little rest while offering a good photo opportunity.

05-Chairs near long borders

The long borders feature a purple-blue-yellow-gold colour theme, seen below in combinations using variegated ‘Axminster Gold’ comfrey (Symphytum x uplandicum) with yellow phlomis (P. russeliana) on the left; at right is Allium cristophii with ‘Gigantea’ rusty foxglove (Digitalis ferruginea), blue Italian alkanet (Anchusa azurea) and phlomis in the background. The long borders and parking lot gardens are overseen by gardener Doug Croft, who greets me later and helps with a few plant id’s.

06-Yellow-blue Themed long borders

What was once the staircase leading to the tennis court in the Rosengartens’ time is now a dramatic, sedum-topped entrance to the Tennis Court Garden.  Perhaps the best description of what lies ahead is “formal but informal”, with five flower beds planted in a profuse mix of perennials, bulbs and shrubs.

08-Stairs to Tennis Garden

The colours in the Tennis Court Garden in June are predominantly pink, purple, yellow and chartreuse, the latter seen in the ‘Ogon’ spirea (Spiraea thunbergii) in the middle and the ‘Hearts of Gold‘ redbud (Cercis canadensis) at left. You also see the luscious Itoh hybrid peony ‘Bartzella’ and a few spikes of the popular salmon-orange ‘Illumination Flame’ foxglove (Digiplexis). In the background, ‘New Dawn’ and ‘Dr. Van Fleet’ climbing roses wreath the attractive pergola.

09-View to Tennis Garden

Pollarding is used at Chanticleer in order to harness certain trees for their attractive foliage while maintaining them at a shrubby border size.  Two examples are the Cercis canadensis ‘Hearts of Gold’ redbud and the large-leafed princess tree (Paulonia tomentosa) seen here.  Also shown are ‘Caradonna’ meadow sage (Salvia nemorosa) and an allium (likely ‘Ambassador’).

10-Tennis Garden plants

Simple combinations can be very striking, especially using bulbs like the summer alliums, which offer a big hit of spherical purple, against a shrub like the Magic Carpet spirea (Spiraea x bumbalda ‘Walbuma’).

11-Allium in spirea

Comfy, foldable chairs sit in front of the rock wall behind the Tennis Court Garden.  Here, the yellow-blue scheme continues the colour theme of the long borders nearby.  Yellow fumitory (Corydalis lutea) and goldenmoss stonecrop (Sedum acre) predominate here, along with various blue or purple campanulas, centaureas and perennial geraniums.

07-Chairs & yellow-blue plantings

At the bottom of the hill just before the woods is the enchanting Cut Flower Garden with its rebar-grapevine arches festooned with clematis (red ‘Niobe’ is shown).  The arches provide structure throughout the year and draw the eye through the four quadrants overflowing with a riotous mix of annuals, bulbs and perennials meant to evoke an old-fashioned cottage garden.  Though the annuals will hit their stride with summer’s heat, here we see some of the June cast of characters:  biennial purple sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis), ‘Filigran’ oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) and peach ‘Spring Valley Hybrids’ foxtail lilies (Eremurus).

12-Cut-Flower Garden

Rich-purple ‘Sarastro’ bellflower (Campanula) is joined by the zingy pink orbs of ‘Fireworks’ gomphrena and orange calendula.

13-Campanula 'Sarastro' & Gomphrena 'Fireworks'

Below, Emma Seniuk, the gardener for the cut flower and vegetable gardens, works with David Mattern to build a sturdy structure she calls the “cantaloupe tree”.  All the gardeners at Chanticleer are encouraged to create the furnishings, accessories and even bridges for the gardens in their charge.  Emma also spent 18 months in a student placement at England’s Great Dixter Garden, benefiting from a special scholarship in the name of Great Dixter’s renowned founder (and superlative flower gardener), the late Christopher Lloyd.

14-Emma & David building a Canteloupe Tree

Here is the charming vegetable garden, surrounded by its rustic paling fence.

15-The Vegetable Garden

With its quadrants separated by paths, the garden suggests a French potager but the vegetables are planted within them in very American-style rows.  Some of the harvest is used by the garden, but much is donated to those in need.

16-Vegetables

Now we are heading into Chanticleer’s newest “garden”, Bell’s Woodland.  Opened in spring 2012 and planted with wildflowers, rhododendrons, redbuds and other shade-lovers under the mature native forest canopy, it is still being developed but offers a shady, naturalistic contrast to many of the Chanticleer’s other gardens.  Don’t you love this fabulous “fallen tree” entrance fabricated by the Bell’s Woodland gardener Przemyslaw Walczak!  17-Entrance to Bells Run Woods

Bell’s Woodland celebrates plants of the Eastern North American forest and features mature natives like this American beech (Fagus grandifolia) with its boughs overhanging the path. The path, incidentally, is comprised partly of recycled shredded tires.

18-Beech in Bells Run Woods

Towering tulip poplars (Liriodendron tulipifera) are a feature of the woods.

19-Tulip poplar-Liriodendron tulipifera

And, of course, chairs are set around so visitors can enjoy the peaceful surroundings….

20-Trunk & chairs - Bells Run Woods

….interrupted only by the song of birds.

21-Bird in Bell's Run Woods

Though the vast majority of plants here are native, a lovely collection of clematis has been established to add a little color to the pathways.  The pink-flowered plants adjacent to the path are Phlox ovata.

22-Bells Run Woods path with clematis

The woods are cut through by a creek called Bell’s Run.  At one time, this old water wheel pumped water from the creek to the Rosengartens’ swimming pool up the hill.  The white-flowered tree is Chinese dogwood (Cornus kousa).

23-Waterwheel-Bell's Run

A chair under a black walnut tree (Juglans nigra) overlooks Bell’s Run creek.

24-Black walnut-Bells Run

Orange globe flower (Trollius spp.) pairs with a pink meadow phlox along the path.

25-Trollius & phlox - Bells Woods

Do you know what this is in the clovers and grasses?  I was puzzled by a fern that didn’t seem to be growing yet.  That’s because it wasn’t growing.  Instead……

26-Ostrich fern marker

….it was an ingenious (and very naturalistic) way to mark the edges of the camassia meadows using the old fertile fronds of ostrich ferns (Matteucia struthiopteris), so the gardeners would know where to mow without cutting down the ripening leaves of the camassia that were in bloom a few weeks earlier.

27-Camas meadows - Bells Woods

This massed planting of white astilbe does something quite wonderful when viewed from the other side.

28-Astilbe in Bells Woods

It forms a fluffy white horizontal to catch the eye and backlight the silhouette of the tree.

29-Astilbe effect - Bells Woods

Here is a small array of ferns from Bell’s Woodland: lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina) with kousa dogwood, left; royal fern (Osmunda regalis) with a trillium leaf, top right; and a rain-splashed maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum) at lower right.

30-Dogwood & Ferns-Bells Woods

We come out of the woods near the old orchard where the daffodil leaves are ripening in the long grasses, and we’ve finished the first half of our tour.  If your legs are still working, why not join me for the second half?

31-Orchard path