7 Features Every Country Garden Needs
The secrets to cultivating the ultimate country garden.
By Charlotte Moss
In her new book, Garden Inspirations, esteemed designer Charlotte Moss invites readers into her spectacular East Hampton, New York garden and shares the wisdom she's cultivated over 25 years.
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Homegrown Charm
Gardens have long provided humanity with pleasure and delight, but the role of the garden today, in our technology-driven lifestyles, may be even more important, and "the principles" of old gardens, as Edith Wharton called them—"to escape, to enjoy, to behold our own patch of beauty and pleasure"—can be applied to your own backyard, rooftop, or window box.
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Flower Garden Essentials
You can be at it for a few minutes or a few hours—it never really matters, because the joy is in the doing. While gardens are truly personal, intimate endeavors, here are some of my essentials for carving out a perfect patch...
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1. An Inviting Entry
Just as an empty chair welcomes a visitor with its open arms so, too, can the approach to a house. At my home, Boxwood Terrace, the hornbeam hedges line one side of the drive, while a double border acts as another screen and backdrop to the white fence along the road. There is a feeling of anticipation mixed with invitation. The same principle of invitation can be translated from one discipline to another. Gardening, architecture, landscape design, and interior design: The atmosphere of the garden is the single most important element—that ephemeral quality gardeners seek where all the senses are awakened and the essence of the place is etched in our memories.
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2. A Winding, Meandering Path
Beloved gardener Robert Dash said it best: "All good garden paths should lead to loitering with fine intent, and if they don't, then something is wrong indeed. Loitering is horticulturally permissible behavior." Boxwood—a shrub that I have such distinct memories of growing up in Virginia visiting the James River plantations, Colonial Williamsburg, and everywhere you went in Richmond—was one of my first and more important requirements for our gardens and property. While there are no hedges sculpted as birds in my garden, there are a number of boxwood hedges rounded, squared off, and snaked through other borders.
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3. Roses, Roses, and...
Once a year we have this joy, the joy that roses bring…persuading us, imploring us, to enjoy the moment! Anyone who grows roses, has grown roses, or reads or dreams about growing roses knows one thing: Roses are not without their challenges. However, the benefits, the beauty, and the joy far exceed any and all heartache.
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...More Roses
In the last 20 years, I have estimated replacing all of my roses in my beds at least twice. We are close to the ocean and experience harsh New York winters, but forget all of that. We must have roses.
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4. Herbs and Edibles
Our kitchen garden—what the French call the "potager"—is oozing with basils, marjoram, sorrel, oregano, and rosemary in terra-cotta towers. Fig trees are growing like weeds, and we look forward to the next crop of fruit, while the apple espalier is showing some promise of a pie or tart or two. Of course I love cooking with the herbs I grow, but many also make great companions in my floral arrangements, like scented geranium, tomato leaves, mint, parsley, and lemon verbena.
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5. Wildflowers
Wildflowers introduced me to a world with no rules. They taught me that what there is, there is and to make the most of it. I remember picking blackberries along the unpaved road to my grandmother's river cottage and grabbing honeysuckle, Queen Anne's lace, and chicory. I remember the lady slipper orchids that we found in the woods. I would bring them home to repot them as though I had discovered a flower no one else knew about. It was there in the woods that I learned to appreciate beauty in its natural habitat, and that the simple things can be the most sublime.
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6. A Collection of Pretty Containers
Some people play golf; I prefer flower arranging. (Yes, I did try golf years ago—I didn't like the outfits.) My husband, the golfer, and I joke that my garden room—filled with silver vessels, woven baskets, and blue-and-white porcelain containers—is my ninth green. I am not a vase snob, by which I mean, if I like it, I buy it. Whether from a thrift shop or an antiques shop, the provenance is irrelevant when it comes to collecting vases. Things find you along your path or you find them—there was an emotional reaction that caused the two of you to go home together. As a designer and a collector…nothing beats the thrill of the hunt.
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Country Vases
I don't know how many vases I own, but I find that there is always some shape, some size, some color that has escaped me. Antique, new, thrift shop—the origin is unimportant.
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7. A Quiet Spot to Sit
If you had to describe my garden, it's not so much about parterres and sweeping vistas as it is about intimate spaces, small rooms—gardens within gardens. We invited Gilles Guillot, the head gardener of the Prieuré Notre-Dame d'Orsan in Maisonnais, France, to re-create the same rondel-like windows into our hedging as he did at Orsan, and to weave similar willow benches, a gloriette, and frames for the espalier. Like rooms in a house, exterior rooms also want furnishings. Drawing your eye to a quiet corner, at the end of an allée, or under a tree, garden seating begs you to stay awhile, to sit and enjoy the view and the fruits of your labor.
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Garden Inspirations
Charlotte Moss's ninth book, Garden Inspirations, will be available on April 28 ($50; rizzolibookstore.com).
NEXT: 46 Fun and Cheerful Craft Projects for Spring
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10 Surprising Things You Didn't Know About Your Garden
Gardening is hardly a straightforward practice — goodness knows it takes skills, dedication, and more than a little luck to grow flowers and veggies. Here are some just plain fun, silly, or even mind-boggling facts.
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