Garden Tour, Part Three

As we continued on our garden tour in Swarthmore, PA, I was so excited to see this cute stone  cottage with a lime green door. When the bus stopped and I realized this was the garden we were visiting,  I was beyond happy. This was just our kind of house and garden, colorful and a little bit quirky. The garden is owned and tended by Joe Henderson, one of the gardeners at Chanticleer Gardens near Philadelphia, one of my very favorite gardens ever (if you are ever near Philadelphia, you have to go).  The smallest of the gardens we visited,  this one seemed the most like our own gardens, in the sense of being manageable and in a neighborhood. I spent a lot of time looking at all the plantings in their great entry garden. Love that chartreuse Japanese forest grass of course, and the climbing hydrangea.

Japanese forest grass

Walking around to the backyard, you pass through a shady garden with lots of hostas, hellebores, and these lovely woodland peonies. I had never seen woodland peonies before,  and they were so pretty.

I loved the use of the stone walls to differentiate the levels of the garden. There were beautiful trees surrounding the property. There was also more ornament in this garden than in the others--the gardener is a metal work craftsman and does all the metal work at Chanticleer, and all the metal work in this garden was done by him.

There was a great collection of bonsai and other potted plants on the terrace. The attention to detail was amazing,  like the oyster shells surrounding a pot, and the carefully placed rocks.

Primroses

Because it was the last garden of the day, and they knew we had a long bus ride home, the owners were very gracious and had a lovely table set up on the lawn with wine and cold drinks,  cheeses, and fruit, and everyone mingled and asked questions and talked gardening. It was a wonderful way to end the garden tour. We were all very inspired, and I came away with a few things that I am going to work on in my garden:

• Plant more
• Plant more of what does well
• Plant tulips
• Details matter

A great gardening day with my pals