THE AREA around Philadelphia is well known for its richness of public gardens, including many historic ones. But the region is also home to an impressive roster of distinctive private landscapes, from formal 19th century European-style estates to mid-century modern residences and contemporary ones. Now, a new book takes us inside the gates of 21 of them, places filled with ideas for our own gardens maybe, too.
βPrivate Gardens of Philadelphiaβ (affiliate link) is the new book from garden writer Nicole Juday and photographer Rob Cardillo, both of them Pennsylvania gardeners in their own right. Its pages welcome us into a rich world of horticulture and landscape architecture, and they shared with me some of what they saw and learned in creating the book.
Plus: Enter to win a copy of the book by commenting in the box near the bottom of the page.
Read along as you listen to the May 6, 2024 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
philadelphia gardens, with nicole juday and rob cardillo
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Margaret Roach: Oh, boy, thereβs just so much beauty and so much to learn from reading and looking at the book. So just to get started, I keep wondering why this area around Philadelphia? [Laughter.] Because I mean, not long ago I read a book about the DuPont family gardens in the Brandywine Valley, in that same area, and now hereβs your book.
And what are the forces that you guys think made this area so horticulturally rich? I know in the book you say something like, βItβs the northernmost southern city, and the southernmost northern city.β That made me laugh (and I wondered if I was going to be able to get that out without getting it wrong).
Nicole Juday: Well, this is a question that I have been pondering over for many years because Iβm not from Philadelphia. And when I got here, I was astonished by the number of public gardensβand then as I became more involved in gardening, private gardens. And this book was the excuse or opportunity to do a really deep dive into trying to unpack a little bit of some of the factors, anyway, that all conspired to make gardening expressed really almost at its highest form in Philadelphia.
And not to say that there are not amazing gardens elsewhere, because there certainly are in many areas. But there really is a concentration here. And there is a culture of horticulture that is quite strong here. We have a lot of horticultural institutions. We have college-degree programs focused on horticulture as well as certificate programs.
But I got really interested in some of the historical factors that led Philadelphia to have such a concentration of gardens. And one of those that might be interesting to your audience is that Philadelphia, which is not a particularly prosperous city today, was incredibly wealthy right during that golden age of horticulture. When you think of the robber barons and the big industrialists, and there was so much money to be made in Pennsylvania basically by exploiting its natural resources in the late 19th and early 20th century: incredible deposits of coal through most of Pennsylvania, wood that could be made into charcoal, which then could be made into iron and then steel, and then those used for the tracks for these railways. There were a lot of great railway fortunes.
And this was all happening at the same time that having a fabulous garden, even if you didnβt particularly care about gardens was just something that wasnβt really even socially desirable, but it was almost like a prerequisite.
Margaret: Right. Well, and I think that the European tradition, and of course many of the people who came and settled, obviously of European origin and so forth. So that was a tradition that was almost imported, in a sense, yeah. Rob, did you grow up there? Are you from the area?
Rob Cardillo: Iβm a transplant also, from Pittsburgh. There was almost no real horticulture, at least when I was growing up. So when I came to Philadelphia, I was just overwhelmed by the number of public gardens and arboreta, and then eventually started finding the private gardens, which are just some amazing gardens. And I had thought for years that a book about these private gardens would be wonderful.
I had done a book on private gardens of South Florida a few years back with Jack Staub, and I found it to be reallyβ¦ It was wonderful, but I kept thinking, βWhy isnβt there a similar book on Philadelphia?β I mean, our gardens seem to be a little bit more reality-based than Florida, and more conscious of conservation and more attached to history. And so the idea for this book was actually a few years in the making.
Margaret: Yeah. So the book of course shows and tells the stories of these gardens and their makers, and in some cases their history, depending on whether theyβre some of the older gardens. But in the photos and the words, I found a lot of ideas, of kind of lessons, as I said in the introduction, for gardens and gardeners elsewhere as well. And I thought maybe we could highlight some of those.
And it was interesting because some of them were just little ideas that just reminded me of something that I was like, βOh, yeah, I want to do more of that.β And I think the gardens, you tell the name of the town that each one is in the headline. And I think one is in Coatesville, is that how you say the place? There was these beautiful pollarded willows in Coatesville [above], and even the old stump of a willow resprouting. And just these very simple things that anyone could do but it just had been done and had been maintained for years. And it was just wonderful. And I just thought, βWhy donβt we all do more of that?β Thatβs not expensive and itβs not complicated, and it just requires consistency [laughter].
So which one of you wants to start and tell me something that you saw that stuck with you or that you think other people would benefit from?
Nicole: There were a number of things that I feel like I took away from the project, and some that have really changed my own gardening. And a really easy one that I have paid so much more attention to since studying these gardens, is that I now have an arborist come up to my garden in the winter and do structural pruning on younger trees. Trees like a Cornus mas, a Cornelian dogwood, crape myrtles. Anything that just benefits from being shaped while itβs young. Itβs not expensive, and then it just pays off for the lifespan of that plant. And one thing that was very consistent among these gardens that were wildly different in size and style and cultivation, was people had invested early in getting their woody plants shaped beautifully. Thatβs probably the most obvious one.
I thought there were a lot of really interesting lessons in how people use objects in their garden. There are some gardens in the book that really have very little in the way of ornament [above] and that anything thatβs not living would be something utilitarian like a wooden tuteur to grow roses up, or just a simple picket fence. And then there were other gardens that made lavish use of found objects as decorative elements and sculptures. And some of these were important sculptures and some of it was people finding things that they liked, like an old piece of industrial equipment, and putting it in their garden. Or making something themselves out of some inexpensive materials. So it gave me a broader sense of how ornament can be used in this sense, and objects. And the same with positive and negative space, too.
Margaret: As another idea?
Nicole: Yeah. And how there are not very many gardens that have a lot of open space between plants in the book. And I thought that that was interesting. And how people kind of played off the void of a lawn or a gravel garden with then something really lavish in terms of a planting plan.
Margaret: Yeah, and I think a lot of times we think we have to plant up everything. And youβre right, the opposite, having the antithesis of it makes the lushness over there seem more exciting in a way. So, Rob, what about you?
Nicole: You said it better than me.
Margaret: Well, no, but Rob, what about you? Were there things that reallyβ¦ And you come at it with a different eye, not just as a gardener, but as a photographer. And youβve photographed, oh my goodness, I canβt even imagine how many incredible gardens over the years, and what struck you in particular?
Rob: Well, thatβs interesting. And what struck me, is actually Iβll piggyback a little bit on what Nicole said, was that the use of ornaments and objects can add a lot of personality to a garden. They become very important focal points, especially when youβre dealing with naturalistic plantings. It seems like it calls out for something to just hold the eye a little longer.
And even expanding on that a bit, I know one of the gardens, thereβs one in Frenchtown where the woman who is, I think sheβs a trial lawyer now, but she used to be an interior decorator, decided to paint her outbuildings certain colors that would match the flowering trees. Her barn is painted partly red, like a red Aesculus [below] that blooms nearby. Or thereβs a soft white she uses behind some of her hydrangeas. And thereβs a nice gray that complements her flowering wisteria. And I just realized how a lot of people donβt really consider that when theyβre painting outdoors, that you can actually pick up the colors from the garden and put them on the walls.
Margaret: Yeah, thatβs interesting you say that, because one of the gardens that struck me, and I donβt know for you two what you thought, and I donβt know how to say the place, Rydal, is that how you say it? How do you say the town?
Nicole: Rydal, yes.
Margaret: Rydal. There was a mid-century modern house [photo, top of page]. And you point out, Nicole, in the book, you point out that we know what a Victorian garden is supposed to look like, and we might know what certain other period gardens are supposed to look likeβa colonial garden. But we donβt know what a mid-century modern garden is supposed to look like.
And those people, like what you were just saying, Rob, they picked up on some of the color things. They had these panels of color on the side of the house, and then they planted certain of the annual things and other things in the beds that picked up on those colors. Blue and red I think were two of the colors, theyβd have big swaths of blue and red in the beds as well as on the side of the house.
And they used that Corten steel, those beds. Iβm almost so envious of those. It looks like rusty metal, but itβs this incredibly strong steel that can be bent and made intoβthey had like amoebic-shaped, all these interesting-shaped, mod-looking beds. Again, it picked up on the style. I loved that. You know the place of course and you probably could describe it better.
Rob: No, thatβs Craig Wakefield and he is a mid-century fanatic. I think he redid the house first, and maybe Nicole can expand on that, but his entire house was redone to reflect or to restore it back to a mid-century look. And then he decided to make the gardens in that fashion. Which youβre right, there is no tradition of mid-century gardening. So it was wonderful to see. I think it was very innovative and clever.
Margaret: Yeah. And then the plantings were great, too.
Nicole: He was inspiring to me because he had been so fastidious in restoring the house to exactly how it wouldβve been, wouldβve looked, when it was built in the late β40s. And then with the garden, he just let himself go completely free and just have the garden that he wanted. And what I love about that garden, among many things, is that strong use of color. And modern architecture is not supposed to be very graceful or welcoming; thatβs not the point of it. But heβs put in this garden, and especially his use of ornamental grasses that have such incredible movement constantly, and then this very static rigid structure behind it, the way that the landscape and the architecture play off each other is fantastic.
Margaret: Yeah. And then again, those steel beds. So theyβre very solid, but theyβre, again, the shapes are a little soft, I think, at some of the edges. So itβs like this hard-soft thing. It was fun. It was really fun to see the experiment that was going on there. But I do love, to pick up on Robβs point, the idea that we can think about color, and color either being inspired by the color of our house and then using that in the garden or vice versa, and that thatβs a way to anchor things better.
So Nicole, do you have another βaha,β was there something else that really stuck out?
Nicole: Well, people had taken some pretty creative and really attractive measures to manage stormwater, which is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. I didnβt quite realize that throughout our region in Philadelphia, in some places there arenβt a lot of restrictions around what you can and canβt do. But yet other areas that have a more delicate watershed, it is extremely restrictive of how much you can build, how much open space you need to leave, what kind of mitigation measures you need to put into place.
And so people had done really interesting things from very complex rain garden systems to a dry streambed that would have the capability of channeling water when it comes through, to planting a lot of trees in wet areas or meadow plantings. Which in some cases made land that hadnβt been usable in a very long time, because it was too wet when it flooded, into space that you could actually walk on or play on or ride your horse on. So that was interesting. And I think that there are details about the kind of interventions that people took to deal with some of these challenges.
Margaret: There was one in Wayne, Pennsylvania, that had a series of rain gardens to deal with the problem with the wet. But in the pictures at least, congratulations to Rob, I didnβt look at it and go, βOh, itβs a bunch of rain gardens to solve the problem of wetness.β It was just beautiful, you know what I mean? So the technology, if we want to call rain gardens technology, that strategy was used, but in a very beautiful way. So itβs practical and beautiful. And I think thatβs what we, as gardeners, we have to unite the two things, not just the aesthetic but also the practical in these fast-changing times, in these challenging, unexpected times.
Rob: Thatβs true. And actually in that garden in particular, the rain gardens arenβt just simply pits or depressions, but there are highly engineered sets of pipes underneath in certain types of soils so that everything drains out in a really smooth way. And it takes maintenance, too, they need to be cleaned out I think every year so, all the debris. So itβs not just a simple rain garden, itβs a bit of engineering to get it to work.
Margaret: There was another one, someone I havenβt seen in many, many years, Charles Cresson, whoβs been gardening a long time in that area, a well-known gardener, and how he manages to have so many different plants versus big drifts or multiples of a smaller palette of plants, and yet it hangs together. Can we talk about that a little bit? Because I think thatβs a problem. A lot of us have that collector inclination, we want to get, βOoh, look at that. Look at that. Oh, I want to get that. I want to try this. I want to try that.β And it can just get to be a mess, right? A collection and not a garden. And yet he manages it, how does that work?
Nicole: Well, I feel that because thatβs my own personal challenge with gardening. Have you heard this phrase βdrifts of oneβ?
Margaret: Yes. Drifts of one, exactly [laughter].
Nicole: And Charlesβs Garden is absolutely a collectorβs garden. And Rob, Iβll be curious what you think. I mean, one is that he does have a true collection garden where heβll have multiples of a genus or a species and put them in some areas in proximity to one another so that itβs not completely discordant or disconsonant. So the camellias are all in one area, even though it might be 50 varieties. And he collects categoriesβso rock gardens, bonsaiβand will group them together. I think that helps. Rob, what do you think?
Rob: I think it helps, too. I think it helps that he gardens probably more than anybody I know. I mean, heβs out there constantly. Almost every day I visit the gardens, he is there. He works really hard. He has some helpers. And I think heβs on top of everything and his eyes is good, and he can see where things arenβt working. And heβs not afraid to move things and shift things around. Heβs fanatical, and I love that in a gardener.
Margaret: [Laughter.] It helps to be fanatical. I love what you were saying, Nicole, about the grouping, the camellias grouping, the whatever. It reminds me of gardens that I really loved in visiting English gardens years and years ago. I was attracted to go see all of the famous, what they in some cases called order beds or taxonomic beds or systematic collections, where related plants were put together. Usually it was by family of plants, all the aster relatives were put together or whatever. All the grasses were put together. But I loved seeing that because it could still be beautiful. It didnβt have to look purely scientific. It could still be done with beauty. And so yeah, thatβs a good description. Any other ones? Who wants to mention another aha, or just highlight?
Rob: One that just keeps coming back to me and perhaps, I mean itβs something probably everybody learns early on: Itβs the beauty and futility of symmetry. Trying to make something symmetrical in your garden [above] and having it reflected on the other side is justβ¦ In your mindβs eye, it can look really beautiful until something dies or is stunted or needs to be pulled, and then youβre sort of stuck. And itβs a shame when you see gardens where a boxwood has succumbed to something and itβs a missing tooth in the garden. So I think instead of symmetry, people are moving more towards a dynamic balance. Something that might have some symmetry, but itβs not a direct symmetry. Itβs not a mirrored symmetry.
Margaret: Itβs not like a parterre, a four-square, formal kind of old-style garden, yeah.
Rob: Yeah.
Margaret: O.K. And Nicole, another thought?
Nicole: Let me see if I can articulate this. But probably the most, to me, profound thing that I still think about since finishing this book is how people can be really good at doing something, extremely talented, but then you could take it to the next level which is to be able to articulate why it is that you are making the choices that youβre making aesthetically and with your design. And thatβs something that I have been bad at doing in my own practice of gardening.
If you were to ask me, βWhy do you like alpine gardens so much?β I donβt know, I just do. I feel like it. I enjoy them. But no, it turns out I like the idea of worlds within worlds in a garden. And I wouldnβt have been able to articulate this if I hadnβt spent so much time talking to people who were so good at framing what it was they were doing in their garden and why.
And I would kind of encourage anyone whoβs really into gardening and also doesnβt feel very articulate, like I often donβt, to just practice even in your own head of putting your impulse into an actual thought of why it is that youβre doing what youβre doing. Because itβs a discipline, but it also is quite satisfying and fun.
Margaret: Thatβs a good point, a very good point. Uh-oh, now Iβm in trouble [laughter]. Iβm going to be sitting here thinking about that, wondering why am I doing what Iβm doing over here? Rob, do you have one more that you want to share, for instance?
Rob: No, Iβll just pick up on Nicoleβs. I think I learned that, too. It seems like every garden needs a mission statement, and I think I put mine together too during this book. And itβs evolving, but at least I have themes now that I can work in my head, so itβs a positive thing.
Margaret: Does that help? I mean, at this time of year, one of the big dangers of course is that we can all go binge and run amok [laughter] when they open the garden centers and so forth. So I guess having a mission in our head would help us even with that, right? If weβre shopping and moving things around within the garden and so forth, is to let that be in our mind, front of mind, yeah?
Rob: Yeah.
Nicole: I think so. And in planning new projects in your garden and to think about what it is that you want to do and what youβre trying to, whatβs your philosophy behind that? What are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying to convey? It just makes it a moreβ¦ Itβs like just adding another layer of texture and richness to a project that is already going to be very textured and rich.
Margaret: So you two, youβre not out running around looking at gardens together this spring, are you [laughter]?
Nicole: No, itβs sad. We had a couple of really fun years of doing that.
Margaret: I bet. I bet. Well, you certainly did a magnificent job. And itβs so great that you collaborated, and so itβs not just well-researched and written but it also has the beautiful photographs; you can really dig into each garden and get the whole picture, which helped me a lot. And I just want to thank you for making the time today to tell us a little bit more about it. So, thank you.
enter to win a copy of βprivate gardens of philadelphiaβ
IβLL BUY A COPY of βPrivate Gardens of Philadelphiaβ by Nicole Juday and Rob Cardillo for one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter is answer this question in the comments box below:
Following up on that last point they took away from their experience visiting all the gardens for the book: Do you have a mission statement for your garden? What are you trying to convey?
No answer, or feeling shy? Just say something like βcount me inβ and I will, but a reply is even better. Iβll pick a random winner after entries close at midnight Tuesday, May 14, 2024. Good luck to all.
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