Chanticleer: A Pleasure Garden

7. Minder Woods, the Ruin, and Gravel Garden

| 1 2 1 By August, the foliage and venation of the hardy begonia is agreeably conspicuous. The stems of a Pieris japonica have been shaped to reveal a pleasing form. There are three woodlands within the thirty-five acres of Chanticleer Garden. Each is quite different in character. The threeacre native woodland, still under development, will mature in the| C H A P T E R 7 | Minder Woods, the Ruin, and Gravel Garden decades to come and define the stream valley at the northern fringe of Chanticleer. Within its framework of American beech, white oaks, tulip poplars, and sycamores, visitors will find all that you might expect in a mid-Atlantic forest, but in artful arrangement. Spring bulbs, spring ephemerals, ferns, and perennials will cover the ground, yielding to the successive flowering of understory shrubs, trees, and vines. Autumn brings its own mantle of leaf color, which we tend to take for granted in the temperate deciduous woods of the eastern United States, but which is precious and deserves veneration. The second sylvan pocket, the one-acre Asian Woods (explored in chapter 4), is a celebration of the bounty of Asian flora and its sublime adaptation to the American garden. The third shade garden is Minder Woods. Pronounced Minn-der, it was named by a former owner of this part of the estate. Chanticleer’s creator, Adolph Rosengarten, Jr., lived in nearby Minder House, now the location of the Ruin. All three of these woods perform a vital role in the enjoyment and understanding of Chanticleer. They provide physical respite as you tour the garden, a place to sit in the shade, but they offer too an opportunity to rest the mind. The floral nature of shade gardens reduces the sensory pitch in a way that is soothing and meditative, Rustic paths move through a woodland floor covered with ferns and perennials. minder woods, the ruin, and gravel ga r de n | 1 2 3 and the reduction in light and temperature has its own cosseting effect. M I N D E R W O O D S At just over two-thirds of an acre, Minder Woods differs from the other woodlands in two essential ways. First, it is at the center of the garden, and is the hub from which all else radiates. The other woodlands, by contrast, are enjoyed on the fringes. Second, it is more traditional in the sense that it doesn’t exclude flora for a theme, which an Asian or native woods must do. Rather, it brings together plants for their companionship and beauty alone. But don’t confuse eclectic with chaotic. This is very much a considered garden, with orchestrated movements through the year and plant groupings and combinations borne of knowledge and experience. It is given much of its structure by an ancient and towering red oak, sweetgum trees, hemlocks, white pines, and firs. Minder Woods is a place that whispers in April, when many of the herbaceous plants have yet to arrive fully and the deciduous canopy is still filling out. No plant personifies this wondrous stirring better than the evergreen shrub Pieris japonica. Its clusters of white, bell-like flowers, its ericaceous racemes, pronounce it a proud member of the heath family. The blooms fall like fountains at the start of the season. In this sublime moment, balanced between the cold of winter and the heat of summer, the new leaf rosettes of the pieris emerge an intense red. In some varieties they are as decorative as any flower and, like a rainbow, are made all the more precious by their transience. Warmth chases away most of the red pigmentation, and when it leaves, pieris lovers yearn for the next spring. Where the woodland path opens on the Ruin side, species pieris form a towering arch. Closer to the path’s central bench, the similarly tall and open Pieris japonica ‘Dorothy Wyckoff’ (the books call it “compact,” but their authors obviously don’t have in mind an old shrub in the woods) displays maroon flower buds that open pink fading to white. The fresh leaf rosettes are of the brightest scarlet, glowing above the clenched silver-green shepherd crooks or croziers of the ostrich fern. 124 | ch ap ter s even P. japonica ‘Temple Bells’, found in the same bed, is smothered in white panicles in spring, and the new growth is a purple-bronze color, sometimes...