More Superb Home-Grown Gardens
June 27th, 2017
One of the highlights of June is that it’s a peak month for garden tours.
The Shippensburg back yard of Jill and John Hudock, one of the stops on our June tour of local gardens.
In the past week, I got to see a dozen excellent home gardens in Cumberland and Perry counties – plus one under-appreciated local public garden maintained by a home gardener.
Six of the gardens were ones we saw during Home-Grown Gardens III – the third series of home-garden visits I put together with Lowee’s Group Tours.
Another six were at the homes of Cumberland County Master Gardeners that were part of the MGs’ June 2017 “Summer Celebration” tour.
And another I saw on the way back from a shade-gardening talk in Waynesboro was the acre-or-so gardens of Diane Fusting, a Franklin County Master Gardener and one-time floral designer.
Rather than bore you with a lot of words, I put together a Photo Gallery of 40 shots from these gardens that you can check out, enjoy and maybe get some inspiration and ideas.
Shots from the previous two local tours and a lot of other tours I’ve done are also on my Photo Galleries page.
Here’s a brief rundown on the essence of the 13 local gardens I saw last week:
Jill and John Hudock, Shippensburg. Wow. What an impressive design and execution by former Master Gardener and designer Jill and her handy husband. Nice focal points and sitting nooks everywhere. The highlight is the 2/3-acre Sunken Garden of English-style flower beds that once was a boring grassy retention pond.
Kathy and Don Engle, Shippensburg. No wonder this yard (next to the Hudocks) was featured in a garden magazine. The back yard is especially well done with a relaxing garden swing, a cute cottage-like gardener’s shed, and a large, shaded water garden by the back patio.
The Engles’ backyard swing.
Shippensburg Peace Garden. Located in Shippensburg’s Memorial Park and cared for largely by Jill Hudock, this shady respite is a great place to sit, wind down and enjoy shrubs and perennials that do well in shade.
Diane and Bob Boyd, Lurgan. The central feature is a huge front-yard pond that’s so big (22,000 gallons) that it has its own dock and lighthouse. That’s Bob’s koi-filled baby. Diane colors the house and front-yard borders with all sorts of colorful perennials and annuals to give the rural landscape a meadowy feel.
Jane and Larry Shull, Landisburg. Both Jane and Larry are artists (fabric and metal sculpture) whose artsy eyes and fun-loving personalities carry over in the landscape, including kinetic art, a secret “bat box” containing two miniature Louisville Sluggers, and an old Dodge Caravan that’s been painted and repurposed into a garden ornament.
The Shulls’ van that became garden art.
Linda and Larry Sieber, Shermans Dale. Linda focuses on perennials and herbs (you can dig your own plants at the couple’s Wylde Thyme Perennial Farm), and Larry has a gigantic and productive vegetable garden as well as fruit trees and bushes, including some less-common varieties.
Lu Conser/Tim Potts, Carlisle. My first stop on the Cumberland County Master Garden tour was to this 3.5-acre garden that has a nice mix of shade and sun areas. Lu and Tim took advantage of it by planting a variety of themed areas, including “Conifer Row,” a Friendship Bed, a Rock Garden, a White Bed and Bessie’s Grove of trees and native shade plants.
Carole and Tom DeWall, Carlisle. The DeWalls hold down maintenance and mulching in the front yard by using densely planted perennials and assorted groundcovers instead of lawn or your typical shrubs with a lot of mulched space between. The back yard has a nice shade garden with a saucer magnolia that was still putting out pink blooms in June.
The landscape stone steps leading up the side of the Smarrs’ house.
Lori and Larry Smarr, Carlisle. How many home gardens have their own vineyard? This 88-acre property does, and the grapes are Larry’s – some for selling and some for making his own wine. Master Gardener Lori has flower borders and foundation plantings throughout, my favorite of which was the stone-lined herb gardens along the hot, sunny, west-facing stone wall of their house.
June Hoch, Boiling Springs. This energetic Master Gardener has been clearing invasives in the wooded area behind her house and turning it into a shade garden with winding mulch paths. Her front yard already is grassless (there’s a patio, perennial gardens and two flanking red maples there), and her back patio is bordered by a very nice water garden with waterfall.
Debbie and Bill Plumpton, Monroe Twp. What grabbed my eye at this 2-acre landscape was the impressive rock garden planted at the side yard to solve what had been a steep slope. Stacked boulders and an effective mix of tough plants (creeping sedum, thyme, yarrow, mountain mint, catmint, etc.) did the trick. Another nice use of space is the shade garden and paver patio under the back-of-house second-story deck.
Janice and David Rose, Carlisle. Most striking here is the big white pergola that lends shade over the back-yard paver patio, which is bordered by a garden of mixed perennials and shrubs. The Roses eliminated grass in more than half of the back yard to make way for sun and shade gardens with a winding mulch path throughout. Lots of plant diversity here.
A shade garden in the Fustings’ side yard.
Diane and Dick Fusting, St. Thomas. Set on a sheep farm in rural Chambersburg, this landscape features at least an acre of gardens all around the house. It’s another place with tremendous diversity, largely because Diane is fascinated by everything from diminutive groundcovers to towering beeches… so much so that Dick put up a border fence as much to keep the sheep out as to keep Diane from planting the whole 120 acres.