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closelocal roots: Blooms grow in a family home passed down through generations
Nancy Draper / guest columnist
When Theresa Hibben inherited her family home, it took her four years to decide what to do with the landscape. While the property has been in her family for 70 years — Theresa is the third generation to live here — when Theresa and her husband John moved into the house in 2000, it was a clean canvas, with very few garden beds.
In 2004, Theresa, who is a garden designer and holds a degree in horticulture, decided she was ready to take what she had sketched on paper four years earlier and bring it to life on this property.
Her plan was to create a secret garden, one that you stumble upon, with pathways that draw you into it.
“I wanted a four season garden so there would always be something of interest going on. I also wanted to fill this garden with plants that would provide fragrance,” Theresa said. “I hired a man with a bulldozer to carve out the whole garden area and create the beds. I was so pleased because he saw my vision perfectly. He took exactly what I’d drawn on paper and brought it to life. I then began planting.”
Theresa’s beds are filled with wonderful plants including Fire glow euphorbia, Knock Out roses, Stargazer and Casablanca lilies, Korean Spice Bush, Daphne odora, Foxtail Lilies, Sarcococca and Aralia elegans variegata (Devil’s Walking Stick.) Taller plants and trees, including Italian Cypress, Giant Weeping Sequoia and Cryptomeria, line the back of the beds, forming this secret garden’s “walls.” Katsura trees are featured in one of the raised beds, and Theresa describes the leaves as having a fall fragrance resembling burnt brown sugar. Other plants, including Parodia persecaria, provide color and interest as the seasons change.
Theresa remembers the many Chinese Pheasants that roamed this property when she was a young girl, so she planted for them, including various grasses and Pheasant Berry shrubs, but with the development that has gone on all around the home, the pheasants have not returned. Theresa explained that the grasses also provide movement and sound — another great element in any garden.
She added a few whimsical plants, including tall perennial verbena. Fennel plants rise high up here and there throughout the beds. Theresa did not plant them — they just blew in.
“If anything comes in that I like, I leave it. Even when the perennials die down, there are still bones in this garden. I love to leave the seed heads of plants like Crocosmia and Cephalaria gigantium to add whimsy to the beds.”
Theresa designed a secret garden that she hoped would draw visitors into it. She has successfully created a beautiful and inviting garden filled with plenty of four-season interest.