The Layered Garden Guys
November 8th, 2016
One definition of “layering” in the garden is placing plants so that the tallest ones are in the back, followed by mid-sized ones in the middle, and then the shortest ones in front.
This is the back of David Culp’s and Michael Alderfer’s Brandywine Cottage.
Another definition is how nature “layers” itself by growing a tall canopy of trees with shorter, under-story trees beneath those, then a shorter shrub layer beneath that, and finally a groundcover layer closest to the ground.
Then there’s the idea of layering gardens by planting different plants that peak at different times, handing off to one another as the season progresses.
That’s the version that David Culp and Michael Alderfer use in their 2-acre Brandywine Cottage gardens in the countryside outside of Downingtown in Chester County.
These gardens became renowned as the basis for Culp’s 2012 book, “The Layered Garden,” which was a best-seller that year and won 2012 best book honors from the Garden Writers Association.
I got to see the gardens on a trip that Lowee’s Group Tours and I put together at the end of October.
The gardens had had a pair of brushes with frost by then, and the perennials were at the beginning of cutback time, but enough was still going on to show the diversity of this place.
Helleborus and snowdrops are Culp’s favorite. There are banks full of those underneath locust trees. But you’ll also find perennials of every sort, lots of trees, shrubs from near and far (Culp goes on plant-hunting trips to Europe and Asia as part of his job with Sunny Border Nurseries), and a few unknown specimens in pots.
The view looking up the steps from the entrance to Brandywine Cottage.
Culp stopped counting when they hit 3,000 plants.
A 24-by-32-foot vegetable garden enclosed in a white picket fence is the centerpiece of the back yard. Rectangular beds full of perennials surround the vegetable garden, and shade gardens edge the perimeter of the property.
It’s a style that Culp calls “country formal.”
“I wanted it to be natural,” he says. “I left all of the trees and didn’t change the grade. I decided I was going to respond to the site and do with it what nature gives me.”
He and Alderfer don’t spray, except for the deer repellents to keep the deer that nature gave them from eating the entire landscape.
That’s probably one reason why Culp leans toward helleborus – it’s a species that deer rarely touch because they’re toxic when eaten.
One thing Culp and Alderfer did do is haul in a lot of rocks from nearby construction, a move that keeps with the look of the 1790s cottage.
Part of the “country formal” look at Brandywine Cottage.
“I’ve been hauling stones for 27 years,” says Culp. “I feel like a mule. But I want it to be like the original owners would’ve had it, more like rubble walls than anything formal.”
The plantings are also done in nature-like colonies and clusters as opposed to neat lines. As Culp put it, “I want the garden to look like it might have a mind of its own. You cannot duplicate Mother Nature, but I think you can capture her spirit.”
It’s an interesting property – very serene, very lush, and a sort of throwback in time. We’re planning to head back to see it again, next time in a different season.
Besides writing, gardening and working in research and plant development for Sunny Border Nurseries, Culp teaches classes at Longwood Gardens, gives gardening lectures around the country, breeds hellebores (the Brandywine series is his), and has been on Martha Stewart’s TV show six times.
Alderfer is a designer who works for a Philadelphia-area company that specializes in indoor plantings and containers. He mostly designs indoor plantscapes for museums, public buildings and private clients.