A Horticulture Society’s Home Garden

A tour from the estate gardener at Meadowbrook Farm

My name is Julie Bare , and I knead at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society ’s Meadowbrook Farm in Jenkintown , Pennsylvania . I studied horticulture at Temple University Ambler and have been work out as the estate of the realm gardener at Meadowbrook for the last six years . I absolutely love what I do ! It is genuinely a blessing to be capable to come to work every Clarence Shepard Day Jr. and put my hand in the soil . I love watching the seasons amount and go , along with the louse , wildlife , and blooms . I live in Philadelphia and have a very lowly backyard garden , so I really think of the garden at Meadowbrook as “ my ” garden .

Meadowbrook Farm is a 25 - Accho garden with a plant shop as well as a wholesale growing operation ( we originate lots of the works for the Philadelphia Flower Show ) . The estate was the home of J. Liddon Pennock and Alice Herkness Pennock . They built the home in 1936 and immediately started planting the garden , starting off of the back of the house . The part of the garden at Meadowbrook that I take care of is the formal bit that surround the house . It is laid out on two terrace and consists of garden room , each with its own paper , that are separated by hedges or stone wall . The garden is design on linear axes with gazebos , fountains , or structures at the terminus meant to direct your eye . We have a number of pee feature , so wherever you are in the garden you may hear the strait of running water .

The garden bones are a potpourri of evergreen woody industrial plant ( rhododendron , aucuba , pieris , cherry laurel , hollies , and more ) that we accent each season by plant century of annuals and container . Spring is a in particular beautiful fourth dimension in the garden , with the dogwoods , azaleas , and daffodils blossom .

This is a view of the Eagle Garden from the second - flooring balcony . The Eagle Garden is off the back of the family and was the first garden created . It boast an eagle statue flanked by two cloud - pruned hemlock trees that take my coworker and me two days to prune every year in March . They are beautiful specimen ! Their bark and limb complex body part is gorgeous . This garden also has four beds we plant seasonally with annual . This fountain we planted snapdragons(Antirrhinum majus , annual ) . On the right , you may see an evergreen delimitation of rhododendron , pieris , and Charles Hardin Holley . On the left we have aucuba(Aucuba japonica , Zones 7–9 ) and two espaliered copper color beech tree trees ( Fagussylvatica , Zones 4–7 ) . Mr. Pennock was a big fan of unusual pruning , and so am I !

Here is a view of the back of the business firm . We are still in the Eagle Garden , but we are face up away from the poison parsley trees . We call this the Eagle Garden terrace . It is a marvelous microclimate because the Harlan F. Stone of the house and patio retains a lot of heat and it has a verbatim southerly exposure . On the wall we have an espalieredMagnoliagrandiflora(Southern magnolia , Zones 7–10 ) on the right and a camellia on the left . On the right there are also twoViburnumcarlesii(Korean spice viburnum , Zones 4–7 ) that we educate as topiary . When they are in flower the fragrance is lovely !

This is the herbaceous plant garden . It hold many repeated herbs such as thyme , sage , lavender , and oregano . It also hold back more unusual medicinal plants such asAsarumeuropaeum(European ginger , Zones 4–7),Hydrastiscanadensis(goldenseal , zone 3–8),Teucriumchamaedrys‘Nana ’ ( gnome germander , Zones 5–9),Cardaminediphylla(two - leaved toothwort , Zones 3–7 ) , andSaturejamontana(winter savory , Zones 6–11 ) . In the spring we plant it with calendula while we look for the perennials to emerge . This class the calendula we choose was a variety called ‘ Flashback Mix ’ that had beautiful spook of icteric , orangish , and blank — and the flowers are edible !

The dip pool garden is one of my favorite smirch in the garden . I love the texture from the Nipponese maple ( Acerpalmatum , Zones 5–9 ) and the arching branches from the weeping blue atlas cedar ( Cedrus atlantica‘Glauca ’ , Zones 6–9 ) . In this garden I plantedFritillariapersica(Persian lily , Zones 5–8 ) , a really neat light bulb that has wonderful glaucous leafage and a dark purple , almost black , flower . In addition to the genus Fritillaria , we have two strange varieties ofOsmanthus , ‘ Hariyama ’ and ‘ Kaori Hime ’ ( Zones 7–9 ) both of which seem to be very dull ontogenesis . There are also a number of troughs establish with alpine and rock - garden plants in this garden .

The Queen ’s Garden is an field that I am very proud of . We have been make stacks of redevelopment to this garden over the past few years . This was somewhat of a forgotten distance when I started gardening here , but it continues to ameliorate every year . Two long time ago we swapped horrifying white gravel for an irregular bluestone patio implant with plants that bear faint metrical foot dealings . This garden historically had a Turkish boxwood hedge around the patio area , but tincture from nearby white true pine get it to die out in some places , which ultimately led to it being removed . Last class we began the process of plant a new hedgerow . I selectedIlex‘Hoogendorn ’ , a variety of evergreen plant holly that gets about 3 ft tall and broad . I have 26 plants waiting to go in the ground this time of year to finish the hedging off on the left side .

The Muse Garden is another region that I have been working severely on for the past few years . If you turn around from the Queen ’s Garden , you are facing the Muse Garden . It used to moderate primarily English ivy , pachysandra , and a few white pines . I set about removing those invading ground covers little by small and planting perennial . Now we have a nice herbaceous layer ofNarcissus‘Thalia ’ ( a beautiful white-hot daffodil),Sedumternatum(woodland stonecrop , Zones 4–8 ; a refinement - tolerant , aboriginal sedum),Polygonatumhumile(dwarf Solomon seal , Zones 4–8),Polystichumacrostichoides(Christmas fern , Zones 3–9 ) , andPolystichumpolyblepharum(tassel fern , Zones 5–8 ) . I also plantedDeinanthecaerulea(false hydrangea , Zones 5–7 ) , which is a peachy herbaceous plant with sorry flowers in theHydrangeaceaefamily , and the uncommon evergreenTrochodendronaralioides(wheel Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , Zones 6–7 ) , which gets about 20 fundament marvelous .

This last image is a view of the star sign that provides the backcloth for most of the garden . The rock used to build the sign was source topically from a Chestnut Hill pit , and in the ripe light source it appears to sparkle . The three - tiered container is a nonfunctioning fountain that we decide to expend as a planter , and it is the first thing to recognise you as you walk up the drive to head to the garden .

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