Rare Home, Robust Garden

Talented stonemason John Given created the distinctive curved wall that hugs the contours of the slope. Throughout this landscape there are as few straight lines as possible.

The quirky 19th-century summer homes that New Hampshire is famous for are sadly disappearing. Whether they are being torn down and replaced by fancy new dwellings, ravaged by fire, or crumbling through neglect, they are becoming a dying breed. When the opportunity to purchase one in the Monadnock area arose in 1996, the homeowners responded quickly with hopes of making it their family’s refuge from the pace of city life.

The oval shape of the bluestone patio is another circular element in the landscape. Some of the many containers of annuals and perennials our homeowner pots up each year thrive in this sunny spot.

Built in 1882 as a summer getaway for a wealthy Bostonian woman, it is thought to be the only private home designed by architect Russell Sturgis and is quite a departure from the Victorian Gothic-style buildings he designed for Yale University. It has all the elements of a Shingle Style home but used in a manner meant to “confound the eye,” says the homeowner, with three projecting bays of slightly different sizes, unusual windows and a mix of siding patterns. It was charming but needed foundation work. “We knew it needed renovation to become a comfortable year-round house, but we believed that with time and patience we could restore it to its original beauty,” they say. It had to be jacked up, put on rails and moved while a new foundation was built. Then it could be settled back down and interior work begun.

Time for Planting

Native coneflowers are a big draw for bumblebees and other pollinators.

As you can imagine, a year or more of construction took a toll on the landscaping. “When it was done it looked like the surface of the moon up here,” he says. “We wanted the gardens to reflect the uniqueness of the house while helping it fit into the landscape.” The first landscape architect they worked with laid out the gardens and curved beds around the house, but most of the plant material he used didn’t last. The same microclimate that makes this such a desirable escape from the heat leads to severely cold temperatures later in the year. “Our cool summers are paid for in the winter,” the homeowner says. Wanting plants adapted to these extremes, they turned to their friend, garden designer Laura Trowbridge, for advice. “First we needed to figure out where paths should go to make the whole property work together,” she says. “Also the homeowners were overwhelmed with too many plant choices. To narrow down the options, we decided to keep the color palette intentionally restrained, relying mostly on pinks, whites and pale lavender flowers, and burgundy and gray foliage colors,” she explains. “They go well with the color of the house, so the house shines.”

Gardens near the front porch feature coneflowers, bee balm, peonies, tall thalictrum, veronicastrum, alliums, smokebush and white hydrangea. Trowbridge also added some annuals including zinnias, impatiens, cleomen and dahlias to the mix for pops of color. Most of the original rhododendrons and mountain laurels were saved and replanted near the house, and a grove of five Kousa dogwoods was created on the lower lawn. In early summer the shrubs are overflowing with blossoms!

Developing An Asian Feel

The sunken patio next to the house was dug to let light reach a basement room, offering a protected location for pots of hostas and tender perennials.

The homeowners had a small, formal Asian garden at their city home but understood that rural NH is not Kyoto. Influenced by a visit to an ancient temple garden in Japan, they envisioned a similar loose, naturalized design that worked with the existing contours of the land and paid homage to the timeless aesthetic of conifers against stone. The general design they settled on features concentric rings of informality with plantings near the house being more formal and the second ring more wild and less tended. Downhill from the house, in the third and final ring — nicknamed the Fern Gully — moisture-loving natives like river birches, winterberry, and witch hazel now join the ferns in a manner the homeowners call “managed wildness.” A curving stone wall, newly rebuilt by mason John Given, using stones from the property, delineates the change in grade between the lower levels. “These homeowners have been the best people to work with,” says Trowbridge. “They understand what the property needs to make it sing!”

A shady path winds around the corner of the house toward the new barn. Rhododendrons, hostas and geraniums grow on the left side while glossy ginger, astilbe, heuchera and impatiens are on the right.

In 2022 they built a small barn on the property to add more equipment storage and a painting studio. Again, they called on Trowbridge to help with its landscaping. She planted pachysandra, ferns, ginger, enkianthus, witch hazel, paper birches, balsam fir and stewartia as well as rhodies and mountain laurel to correspond with the existing plantings on that side of the house and to add to an Asian vibe. “Plants that grow well here are repeated around the landscape,” says Trowbridge. “There is so much going on with the architecture that it doesn’t need lots of different plants.”

Working with Time

The homeowners loved their antique house in the city, even though the garden was tiny. “My wife is a wonderfully enthusiastic gardener and every spring she was itching to get up here and get her hands in the dirt,” he says. Then Covid-19 forced a “temporary” move north that became permanent. Now she is busy developing new raised beds for vegetables and potting up the 50-60 planters she creates each spring. Over the 30 years they have owned this property their gardening style has changed and they are working with Trowbridge to add more natives. They look forward to working in a larger landscape, creating a slower tempo of life for their family, and living and gardening at the pace of nature.

RESOURCES

Given Masonry Systems
603-532-8471

Laura Trowbridge Garden Design
603-562-5213
lauratrowbridge.com

Lindsay Johnson Gardener
603-313-3730
lindsayjohnsongardener.com

Scully Architects
603-357-4544
scullyarchitects.com

Swanson/Architects
603-562-8406
swanson-architects.com