One couple’s garden unfolds room by room

Photographed by Kindra Clineff

Some country gardens bring to mind a vision of cheery flowers in bountiful beds or borders, but Jill and Dan Sczepanski’s one-acre garden in Rowley, Massachusetts, unveils its style and beauty room by room. The progression through these spaces is so structured and so unexpected that you have to move slowly to absorb the full impact of what you see.

A tapestry of plants

Photographed by Kerry Michaels Jovibarba hirta, Sedum album, and Sedum sexangulare scramble over and among the rocks, creating a tapestry of textures in a palette of greens and reds.

Some gardens are grand because they are big and blousy, stuffed full of flowers and foliage. Some are elegant and minimalist—edited to their bare bones. Then there are the gardens that reveal themselves slowly, and you only discover their artistry and unique personality on closer inspection. Take, for example, Mark Brandhorst’s Halls Pond Gardens. Located off the beaten track, three miles from the center of South Paris, Maine, Halls Pond Gardens is easy to overlook, but this jewel box of a garden is well worth the trek.

Compact vegetable varieties save space

Photography courtesy of burpeehomegardens.com Grow Super Sauce tomatoes in a big container with ample staking to accommodate their large size.

Story after story touts the ease and benefits of growing your own food. The reasons—including the profound satisfaction of harvesting homegrown vegetables and herbs—are convincing. “Why wouldn’t you choose to grow your own vegetables, especially ones that are high in nutrition?” says Joe Lamp’l, host of national public television’s Growing a Greener World, an award-winning show featuring organic gardening, green living, and farm-to-table cuisine. “People want to grow their own food because they want more control over what goes into their bodies and where their food comes from. There’s a risk when you don’t know how your food is produced.”

Is there a more pleasant way to spend a summer afternoon than strolling through a lovely garden? This year, you can enjoy several distinctive garden tours, right here on the Seacoast.

A challenging backyard becomes the perfect escape

Photographed by Rob Karosis The homeowners chose a classically inspired design for the pool area, which is seen in the shape of the pool, the tiled deck, and the portico columns.

It seemed like a simple request: add a pool and outdoor entertainment area to the backyard of a Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, home. However, one look at the site told a different story—the yard was a steeply sloped hillside with nary a flat spot in sight. Was a pool even possible?

A garden makes a bridge between house and sea

Photographed by Lynn Karlin Lilies and straight white pines frame a view of Penobscot Bay and Camden.

Good things come to those who wait, and Dyke Messler and his partner Rickey Celentano waited more than seven years for their house and garden to be completed. These good things include a view of Penobscot Bay that goes on forever, a bungalow built in the spirit of the Arts and Crafts home of Messler’s grandparents, and a garden that is a masterpiece of place.

A resourceful gardener reclaims coastline for her English garden

Although the relationship between Sus Miller and coastal Maine got off to a rocky start, the garden she ultimately installed grew on her.

Photographed by Kindra Clineff

Although vacationers flock in summer to Rye’s beaches, Wallis Sands and Jenness, for cool water and hot sand, there is more to this town’s terrain than the seashore—there is also abundant granite ledge, the most familiar intrusive igneous rock, which appears in vast outcroppings throughout the Northeast and chiefly in New Hampshire. The mineral grains of granite, easily visible, give the rock its characteristic speckled look.

Traditions and tips for creating a coastal English garden

The principles of English garden design have deep roots in America. As a result, much of what Americans do in the garden is in the English style, with plants and design elements that many gardeners take for granted. English-style gardens may include lawn areas, perennial beds, rock gardens, vines, flowering shrubs, and trees that stand tall and mark the property line.

You’re in for a tweet

Photographed by Kindra Clineff/Styling by Terry John Woods

Snug Harbor Farm in Kennebunk, Maine, might not have a partridge in a pear tree or turtle doves (yet), but owner Tony Elliott has the six geese a-laying all sewn up with a whole lot of hooves, twigs, and nostalgia thrown in.

A prickly Seacoast survivor

Photograph by Burning Light Photography

Saltspray rose, seaside rose, dune rose, beach rose—by any name, it is as common as sea grass on the coast, as iconic as a lighthouse on a cliff. Flourishing up and down North America’s northeastern seaboard, this rose is so naturalized on the shores of New England that it seems like a native. It grows as wildly as weeds on the prairie. But in fact, this rampant rose is an import, and a relatively recent one at that. Indigenous to the Far East, it was unknown in the West until the late eighteenth century, when a Swedish botanist by the name of Carl Peter Thunberg first spotted it in Japan. Charmed by its crinkly petals and serrated leaves, he called it Rosa rugosa, or “wrinkled rose.”

Unexpected details add spice to a luxuriant formal garden

Photographed by Kerry Michaels
This lush mixed border contains a red Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) found as a seedling at Donna’s great aunt’s house, porcupine grass (Miscanthus ‘Strictus’), and a weeping katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum f. pendulum)

Fourteen years ago, when plant collectors Doug and Donna Morris went house shopping, they knew exactly what they wanted. "When we were looking for a house, we were really looking for a yard, and the house just happened to fit us," Doug says of the property they bought in Salisbury, Massachusetts. The lot—Doug and Donna's future garden—measured just over one-third of an acre and came with a historic Greek Revival house. David Moody, a carpenter, built the clapboard cape in 1846 along with the surrounding homes, but the Morris's dwelling was where Moody lived.

Create garden sizzle with bold tropical plants

Have you dreamed of gardening in the tropics, where giant leaves and brilliant yellow, orange, red, hot pink, and magenta flowers bloom in glaring sun? Well, you don’t have to live near the equator to enjoy the magic of tropical plants. Bananas, elephant ears, cannas, ginger, and many other tropicals can thrive on the Seacoast as annuals with adequate sun, moisture, and decent soil. Tropical plants bring fun to gardening with intoxicating hues and wild textural contrasts that turn everyday borders of perennials and grasses into grand displays.